On the whole, I am not a devotee of shop window displays. I used to occasionally stop to admire Liberty's but that was about it. But following
Rachel's guest post about christmas windows I have been a bit more aware of them, and the ones in Shinjuku this week definitely caught my eye. I was on one of the main roads near the station and the juxtaposition of the Louis Vuitton opulence with the Oioi (I think) department store nearby was very effective*.
The one thing that does always occur to me with these windows is logistics. For example, were the flowers shipped to the store as is and over how great a distance?
How were they packed to ensure they didn't get crumpled and bent? Are those cherries vacuum formed plastic, and what about the balloons? Or sprayed polystyrene perhaps?
Could they even be inflatable? And what happens to it after this display is done with? Does every LV shop have the same display or were these designed specifically for this space?
Moving on I admired the contrast of old culture (kimonos and kabuki make-up) with new culture (comics and manga - although comics are also a little bit old school having now been around for decades) and very new culture (the cutting edge fashion).
With this kind of thing it is the timeline that interests me. Clearly someone had to come up with the concept, get that approved, then choose the items to be displayed, the arrangement and which window they'd be in, have the artist make the drawings, finalise the designs, get them made and then set it up to coincide with having the dresses etc in stock.
And unless that was all done quite quickly, the clothes and things would have been in store for weeks before the windows were in place, which seems pointless.
But then I guess they get previews of the clothes months in advance so that probably explains it. Still - you need a skilled kind of mind to envisage this kind of thing before you've got the real stuff in front of you.
*To put this in context - this particular road is kind of a New Bond Street type bit of street in central Tokyo. Posh shops in abundance which then break off into not so posh and scraggy ones. If you know London think South Kensington tailing off into the Tottenham end of Oxford Street. I constantly get Shinjuku and Shibuya confused, although they are very different in feel. Shinjuku is more for wealthy business types while Shibuya is more teenage. There is a phenomenon known as 'Shibuya Girls' who are the ones who dress all cutesy with ringlets and frills. You see them in twos and threes, usually giggling.
There is also the Shibuya Scramble - the most mental pedestrian crossing you'll ever find. There are about 5 crossings together which you would have thought form a satanic pentagon from the number of people involved. When the green man lights up, *thousands* of people cross at once.
