Aliens Have Landed At Bergdorf

I was laid off during thanksgiving 2008 from my position as a junior visual director from macys. I did all the windows. When the recession hit a lot of department stores slashed their budgets. This department is always the first to take a hit. Sadly, I’ve also noticed scaling back of funding for visual elements in stores over the years. I think because so many new stores that open are in malls with no windows there is less demand for what I do. I had a good chuckle at the side by side comparison. I’ve noticed the new windows are lame, Bergdorf has always been a source of inspiration. It is because of the economy.

I too worked for Bergdorf Goodman back in the mid seventies, when window displays were in it’s glory. Each store would compete for attention every Thursday morning, when NYC got to see all the new windows. We would wait till after the last customer left the store and the only people left inside was the visual dept. We would work over night to produce these fantastic windows that told stories with the product. Sadly the high cost of fabricating these wonders is now a thing of the past. No more do stores have the mega bucks to create what we used to years ago. So what you are seeing in these windows is a sad commentary on what’s going on in the world of display these days, cheap looking props, simple and ridiculous displays that have nothing to do with the product. How I long to see windows, in these great stores, do the kinds of displays they were once so famous for.