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It’s hard work to create that most wonderful time of the year.
Henry Callahan, the legendary visual merchandiser from Saks Fifth Avenue, once said, “We make magic, and we create it with nothing.” Well, not entirely “nothing.” For several New York retailers getting ready to produce their annual holiday windowfests, the magic is being created with lots of time, collaboration and ideas that come out of nowhere – like a workout at the gym.
“We were still putting up our 2006 windows,” says Paul Olszewski, director of windows at Macy’s Herald Square, “when I had this idea while on the elliptical machine. I was on the 36th floor gym of my apartment building, looking out over the city at night. I imagined Santa Claus flying across the sky and that led to a holiday window notion: What about putting Santa in various unique situations as he makes his Christmas Eve rounds?”
In January, as the ’06 windows were coming down, Olszewski met with the production team at Spaeth Design Inc., the New York-based fabricator. Then, as the idea gelled, he sat down with a musical composer to get a theme for his idea, which was shaping up as “Santa’s Big Night” – a grouping of seven windows following Santa’s journey, from enchanted ice caves complete with an interactive naughty-and-nice meter to rollercoaster rides and whirlwind outer-space adventures. “I even went to Six Flags Great Adventure and rode the rollercoaster so I could get the sense of what the experience is like,” Olszewski says.
So there’s music, a mockup of a rollercoaster and even, in one window, a Willard Scott commentary on Santa’s progress. A budget-buster? “Well, I had to get Macy’s approval, of course,” Olszewski acknowledges. “We had an initial set of drawings done by an illustrator in black and white, to conceptualize our idea, and then we added color – in this case, a 1960s color palette with bright shades and funky patterns. Once the drawings were complete, we had to seek approval from the management team – the store manager, director of stores, the marketing department, all the way up to our ceo.” And if the request was for more than budgeted? “We have to edit,” he says.
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