Holiday Windows
T’was the night before Hanukkah and a week before Christmas when all through New York City, people gathered to view holiday window displays at department stores across the city. We enjoy a good photo essay (sharing detail) so we’ve collected a few incredible examples of creativity and craft to share and appreciate with you.
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The first three windows are at Bloomingdale’s on the Upper East Side at 1000 Third Avenue (59th is the cross street). This was the closest to us though there are other stores in New York City - such as the Bloomingdale’s in lower Manhattan.
We’ve included three images from this store to help you appreciate the set of window displays that comes next. Don’t quit after the first three images - it gets much better.
ABOVE: The stand on which the bear is placed rotates to reveal a second display at the back.
It’s fashion oriented rather than a holiday celebration so it’s not included here.
ABOVE: An interesting and detailed display yet it doesn’t inspire much holiday spirit.
ABOVE: Much more holiday spirit in this display.
Not sure about what appears to be an acrobat mouse.
For the next set of window displays, we walked east toward Central Park. Bergdorf Goodman sits one block off the southeast corner of Central Park, adjacent to The Plaza hotel and Pulitzer Fountain.
ABOVE: We included this image to give you a sense of scale for the windows and how they’re right on the sidewalk - easily accessible for any passerby.
ABOVE: This is the window on the corner seen in the image above. Each inset is unique and done by hand. The decoration around the frame is a repeating theme yet each piece is made of cut pieces of paper, as are the figures in each of the insets. Notice the backgrounds of each inset - they’re each done by hand as well.
ABOVE: This window is titled “Scrapbooking”. It’s a perspective view from above even though the viewer is looking in from the side. It has the same repeating theme around the window as the first/other window above.
ABOVE: This is a view from the side of “Scrapbooking” so you can see how complicated it is to mount all the pieces to create the view from above.
ABOVE: This is a detailed view of the lower right corner of “Scrapbooking”. Each piece of paper appears to be individually cut. The letter G is made from thin strips of paper. The wreaths are made of individual pieces carefully assembled.
ABOVE: This is a detailed view from the center of “Scrapbooking” Even the books in the display are made by hand. This one features an inset with paper bugs on an incredibly detailed lattice with each piece cut to make it appear to have perspective - look again at the images above to see how the center of the inset appears to bulge in the middle when viewed from farther away.
ABOVE: This is a detailed view of the lower left corner of “Scrapbooking”. The question marks are also made of what appears to be hand-cut paper. They’re beautifully mounted - the book is suspended in the display and the question marks are suspended on the book yet none of the support is visible… it all appears to float.
ABOVE: Around the corner on 5th Avenue, this window is titled “Metalcraft”.
(We shot this image off center to avoid the photographer’s reflection in the metal objects.)
ABOVE: This beautiful dachshund rotates counterclockwise on the drum. Did you notice its back is to the camera in the image above? It’s a small piece of the display yet immediately grabs your attention.
ABOVE: This window is titled “Woodcraft”.
ABOVE: The “Woodcraft” window does a masterful job graduating from huge pieces of paper to tiny, intricately-cut pieces to draw your attention to various parts of the window. You can see this on the birds - big feathers turn to tiny pieces placed just like real feathers.
We can’t imagine the complexity and intricacy of making the shape of a bird’s head much less covering it with gradually larger pieces of paper that follow the three-dimensional shape of the head.
ABOVE: This window is titled “Mosaic”.
ABOVE: There’s so much detail to drink in!
ABOVE: You can see the subtlety in the giraffe here - larger, darker beads in the middle of each patch of color. A koala bear in a top hat. The zebra is beautiful and such a contrast to the design of the lion.
ABOVE: A better view of the zebra mane and the lion. The playing cards are mosaic. Here you can also see the monkey, the rabbit and more detail of the polar bear.
From Bergdorf Goodman, we walked south on 5th Avenue toward Rockefeller Center - site of “the tree” and well-known ice skating rink. Sax Fifth Avenue sits across the street from Rockefeller Center between 50th and 49th Streets.
If you could turn around in this image, you’d see the view of the Christmas tree we’ve seen countless times - framed between the buildings of Rockefeller Center. If you could look just to the left at the corner you’d see Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
ABOVE: The 5th Avenue facade of Saks Fifth Avenue.
ABOVE: The Saks window displays included many items of clothing. We overheard one group discussing whether “the lights did anything”. They don’t; we just saw a static display.
ABOVE: Saks did have some holiday windows though they weren’t the same level of craft as the Bergdorf Goodman windows we shared earlier. This display is a series of rotating cones that creates what appears to be an ever changing snowflake.
We’ve bookended the Bergdorf Goodman windows with what appears to be the more common display. We noted the Saks windows weren’t the same level of craft as the Bergdorf Goodman windows though that’s perhaps not a fair comment as nothing appears to be the same level of craft or creativity that went into the windows at Bergdorf Goodman.
Both Saks and Bergdorf Goodman are on 5th Avenue and get a significant amount of foot traffic. Saks arguably gets much more because people flock to see the tree at Rockefeller Center to the degree that police close some roads to make it possible for pedestrians to get around without overcrowding that leads to panic. Locals note the gridlock warnings in the city start “as soon as the tree goes up”.
ABOVE: The Louis Vuitton store sits on the corner of 5th Avenue at 57th Street.
Not all shops have significant display windows on the street like the department stores. The Louis Vuitton store applied a Christmas tree to the exterior of their building to celebrate the season.
We’re not sure what it takes to apply a ten-story decal to the facade of a building in Manhattan though we suspect it’s an enormous amount. Still, possibly less that Bergdorf Goodman’s investment.
Leave a comment below to let us know what you think of the windows. Did we miss anything that should be included? Have you seen the holiday windows in person? If not, would you like to?
In case you’re wondering, all of the images included here were shot in December of 2022.