Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

VMSD editors share the season's best designs

By Whitney Harrod

This holiday season, many retailers embraced social media. For instance, Barneys New York collaborated with pop star Lady Gaga to create “Gaga's Workshop” windows, in which the retailer asked shoppers to tweet their holiday wishes into one of the installations. Bloomingdale’s customers were prompted to step on a snowflake graphic while touching a star on the glass. After their pictures were taken, the photos were transferred to three small flatscreens mounted in window frames, and then sent to Bloomingdale’s Facebook page. 

Each window of Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship used real running water and housed a different fantastical bubble-making machine operated by one or more “bubble makers,” who were dressed in couture. Myer Melbourne’s abundant array of animated characters included 18 international costumed children, 32 Christmas elves and four Santa Clauses – some of which paraded on a conveyer belt, and spun up and down on helix corkscrew mechanisms. Plus, 60 ventriloquist choir girls lip-synched to the lyrics of the Australian Girls Choir. Even the lighting color changed at specific beats and chorus transitions.

Bergdorf Goodman – always a showstopper – continued its ongoing mission of bringing decadence to the streets of New York with this year’s “Carnival of the Animals” theme. As the most labor-intensive single window display in its history, the retailer’s visual team spent 10 months constructing an undersea fantasy window full of hand-cut Italian mosaic tiles and a collection of giant blue and green fish.

Enjoy this photo collection of stunning holiday windows from around the globe. Be sure to check out VMSD's February issue for more holiday window coverage.