Open Season

BEST IN SHOW
NON-HOLIDAY WINDOW DISPLAYS
“WILD BEAST”
COACH, NEW YORK

VMSD’s International Visual Competition is now in its 22nd consecutive year, and while the editorial staff and their guest judges were impressed by a range of showings, nothing grabbed everyone’s attention quite as closely as New York-based Coach’s “Wild Beast” window display.

“The product launch of any collection is important, but we were really trying to find how we could talk about these in a way Coach had never talked about a launch before,” says Eva Mai, divisional vp, visual artistic director, Coach.

While contemporary artist Gary Baseman designed the print featured on the product, Samar Younes, global design director, creative development, Coach, took charge of preliminary design sketches and created a theme that would properly support the merchandise.

Taking inspiration directly from the collection’s namesake – also dubbed “Wild Beast” – as well as from a Baseman character named “Le Fauve Buster,” Younes envisioned beast-like claws holding both products and mannequins. The children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” was a direct inspiration for the scale of the project. Beyond conceptualizing, sourcing materials became the main challenge.

The beast’s fur, made from foil and paper, had to “defy gravity” in certain instances to give it a natural, realistic appearance. According to Mai, the hands also had to be engineered to hold weight while still looking effortless. And since the window depth at this location was only 30 inches, fitting the large-scale arms and hands comfortably into the restricted space was a bit hairy (no pun intended). Its eye-catching, curved nails were painted in a 24-karat-gold chrome finish. 

“It’s very strong because it’s just a few elements, and they’re all very strong elements,” said VMSD Intl. Visual Competition judge Brent Hodge, director, merchandising and creative, Bromwell’s (Cincinnati). “It creates this almost controlled world, but it’s an open-back window. They had the ability to add a backdrop, but they didn’t, and it’s actually stronger.”

And the choice to leave the open views into the store was purposeful: “It’s always a tricky thing when you have a situation with open windows,” says Mai, and in this instance, “it made it even more authentic because customers could walk around it and feel like they were interacting with the display, not just standing in front of the glass.”

Fellow competition judge and co-founder, ceo, creative director of ZenGenius Inc. (Columbus), Joe Baer explained, “To me, it really features the product nicely without being so literal with the jungle print. It does a great job of telling a complete story without any words or posters.”

Read more about the 22nd annual Visual Competition winners featured in VMSD's July 2016 issue by clicking here, and be sure to check vmsd.com throughout the month of July for parts II-V of this Visual Competition coverage.