The Unbearable Banishment: city sidewalks wrapped in holiday cheer

Thursday, December 11, 2008

city sidewalks wrapped in holiday cheer

Store windows are a pretty big deal in New York. Designing window displays is an actual profession out here and the penultimate store window display each year is the series of holiday windows at Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue. People anticipate their unveiling and queue up in line nightly to view them. It’s been a New York holiday tradition for over 80 years.

The Lord & Taylor holiday windows do not display merchandise. They are painstakingly detailed scenes of vintage holidays of yesteryear. There are a lot of moving parts and animatronics. I would describe the color palate used as “violent.” It takes a lot of detailed work by a team of artisans to put these windows together and in this high-tech age, they seem quaint and innocent.

You can click on that first pic and it will blow up. I have no idea why the others won't and am too lazy to look into it.







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7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Holy crapsticks batman that's some work!

December 11, 2008 at 12:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yowzers! they don't do that in the malls of the midwest... used to do something like it in downtown cincinnati when i was a kid... i'd wait in line to see them...

December 11, 2008 at 5:13 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

liz: OMG! I heard a tourist say the exact same thing!!

Joke.

daisy: If everyone did it, NYC wouldn't be special anymore.

December 11, 2008 at 6:22 PM  
Blogger AM said...

The best episode of Will & Grace is centered around an appointment Grace gets to create a window display.

p.s.- your pictures make me want to go to NYC!

December 12, 2008 at 12:16 AM  
Blogger A Free Man said...

Those are fantastic. They would actually encourage me to shop at Lord & Taylor.

December 12, 2008 at 4:51 AM  
Blogger Please Don't Eat With Your Mouth Open said...

Haha...Susan strikes again, this time in the comments box! Having given up design, she's now into car insurance...

There was something on the news the other day about the store fronts in NY over christmas. We have some pretty good ones, but nothing like that. Tis cool.

December 12, 2008 at 5:28 AM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

A: Come out and visit. I know a nice quiet place you can stay ;-)

AFM: You wouldn't shop there if you saw the prices!

Jo: Susan is a bitch! That's the second time! I trashed her.

December 12, 2008 at 8:02 AM  

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