The weather has cooled and it’s time to hang up that dress that served as your summer mainstay for beaching, boating and backyard barbeques and slip into some of fall’s sophisticated suits and cold-weather ready fabrics.
For these transitional months, Ann Taylor has made a transition of its own – with its window presentations. Windows at the Madison Avenue and 43rd Street, 3rd Avenue and 52nd Street and 60th Street and Madison Avenue flagships showcase fall’s latest no-nonsense power suits and shirts in a notice-me-now jewel-toned teal. (But don’t worry, the dress hasn’t gone too far, it’s sticking around for another season, just with a silhouette fit for the autumn equinox.)
“We really wanted to design a window prop that was very abstract and rich for the second half of fall,” says Victor Johnson, senior manager of visual presentation for Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Loft.
Wind chimes, made of extruded aluminum bars and finished in a combination of polished and matte copper (produced by Canadian company Europtimum), provide a conceptual backdrop for the fashion and play off the gray, brown and teal apparel colors. The Manhattan flagships feature the chimes in custom lengths and configurations.
“Holiday will revert to more ‘traditional’ window trim again,” Johnson says. “So the wind chimes were sort of a visual palate cleanser for the middle of the season.”
And our palates are certainly primed for more.
Photography: Kitty Cheung, New York, and Bryan Ellingson, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Installation: Supercreator LLC, Brooklyn, N.Y. — Jean Loscalzo