Lighten Up With White Neon

A recent comment from someone involved in the U.K. visual merchandising community was to the effect that: If it’s spring, then most store windows are actually going to be a little predictable, not to say dull. Expanding upon this, the individual concerned opined that flowers, foliage, bunnies and the “nautical look” would just about cover it for most fashion retailers, at the mass-market end of things, at least.

There may be some force to the view, but it’s not necessarily the case that 2015 is the same as every other year. There is in fact one emerging trend in shops across the U.K. that’s worth noting: white neon. Whether it’s bent into a shape to emphasise the outline of the iconic “desert boot” from shoe retailer Clarks, or takes the form of white neon tubes, arranged vertically, as per aspirational fashion retailer All Saints, it’s a visual design trope that is currently everywhere.

White neon looks good and has a clean minimalist feel that perhaps suits the birth of a new season (even if we are still shivering and walking around in heavyweight coats), and is certainly a break from what might be regarded as the norm for this time of year. That said, there is as much of a seasonal VM stampede about white neon currently as any window filled with flowers, because it’s spring and the comment ‘seen one, seen ‘em all’ might reasonably be made.

So what exactly does a fashion retailer need to do to make a splash and turn heads? Sadly, there is no easy answer to this and golden tickets are quite hard to come by as far as visual novelty is concerned. Nonetheless, chapeau to the white neon purveyors. They are doing something different for 2015… even if others are doing something similar.   

John Ryan is a journalist covering the retail sector, a role he has fulfilled for more than a decade. As well as being the European Editor of VMSD magazine, he writes for a broad range of publications in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany with a focus on in-store marketing, display and layout, as well as the business of store architecture and design. In a previous life, he was a buyer for C&A based in London and then Dusseldorf. He lives and works in London.