Viridian5's House of "...What?"

For the December posting meme dine and lauand asked, “What made you decide to photograph department store holiday windows?”

I kind of bounced off the idea a few times before it finally took.

Years ago, the New York City holiday windows you heard about in the mainstream were Macy’s and Lord & Taylor’s, and they were mostly kiddy windows, of little interest to me. Despite the many places I worked or interviewed with for work in Manhattan, I spent almost zero time along Fifth Avenue in Midtown. Recreationally, I spent much more time downtown, like in the Village or visiting my dad at the World Trade Center when he worked there, rarely going further north than 42nd Street. Like many New Yorkers, I tend not to visit a lot of the places of interest tourists come to see.

Bergdorf Goodman first came to my attention in a very short article with a photo of one of its Christmas windows in The Village Voice in 1998. It featured two warmly dressed women in harnesses and wearing reindeer antlers pulling a sleigh with a richly dressed woman in it. That’s it, since Bergdorf seemed to do simpler windows back then. Between that window and a short-skirted, goth-y Mrs. Claus outfit in the window of a alternative clothing store, Religious Sex, in the East Village, I ended up writing the X-Files fic “But Do You Recall...” (Photos at the bottom of the fic page; fic is NSFW.)

That wasn't the first or last strange Christmas fic I've written.....

I forgot about Fifth Avenue until I was wandering the streets of Midtown in December 2001, all of us still reeling from 9/11. The rainy, cloudy day suited the somber mood I seemed to walk through. A lot of fire departments still had the black-striped purple bunting put out for mourning. Bergdorf had a few interesting windows that I shot in passing, which you can see here.

During some Christmas-related wandering through the city in 2005, the Christmas/holiday season being a great time to visit Manhattan, I ended up shooting some department store windows.

In 2006, the Christmas season was less than two months after my brain surgery and cerebral-spinal fluid leak from it, but Daegaer didn’t come to my country and city often so I met up with her and some other fandom folks at a restaurant in Bergdorf’s area. We had a great meal then I took Daegaer on a night tour of Manhattan, which meant that some of my patter was “This is Central Park. Although you can’t see them, I swear it’s full of trees.” Loop to Columbus Circle, and then going east again for a walk down Fifth Avenue, where Daegaer enjoyed all the Christmas windows and decorations and I realized that they were really cool too. (We were also propositioned by a probably drunk old man in front of a parking garage.) My digital camera’s battery crapped out after only a few photos of Bergdorf Goodman’s holiday windows, which had become somewhat more ambitious.

Since I started to see these doctors while working, I had to come to Manhattan to see various doctors for after-surgery care and rehabilitation (which weren’t anywhere near as successful as I hoped). Having spent the fare and being in Manhattan anyway, I’d walk to see the sights if I had the strength for it to make the fare “worth it.” I started shooting cool store windows in general during this time. Queens mostly doesn’t show that much creativity and ingenuity in its windows.

Weak, in pain, first waiting to get well enough to return to work and later realizing that wouldn’t happen and waiting for my Social Security disability to get approved, I needed something to do to keep my mind off things and get me out of the house, and digital photography filled some of that need. It’s also kinder to my occasionally shaky hands than shooting with film had been since I could instantly see if I had really messed a shot up and just delete it instead of hoping for the best while waiting for the film to get developed. Less expensive too. Since cemeteries were closer to my home and an old interest of mine, I shot a lot of statuary and nature in cemeteries too.

As years passed, I saw Bergdorf and Saks’ ambitions rise in their Christmas windows: more complexity, more effort, more creativity. I enjoy Saks’ Christmas for the Rootstein mannequins with their more idiosyncratic poses and the makeup and hair. (For whatever reason, maybe because it requires less effort, most of the year I see mannequins without makeup, hair, or human skintones.) Bergdorf at its best is more artsy, creative, and editorial, with a preference for Victoriana, which I enjoy. My favorite windows of theirs are dense with small details (like the multitude of artist animals in "The Seasons: Winter" window I shot and talked about here, here, and here); you even have to look at the displays at an angle for things that might be hidden in the sides. There’s the nostalgia game of seeing props and artworks from past displays. Sometimes I wonder if Bergdorf has a warehouse like the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark storing this stuff. They'd have to have some kind of directory to find things too.... Bloomingdale's is unreliable for the kind of displays I like but pulls out the occasional showstopper. Henri Bendel used to have a good holiday window but not for years.

The window unveilings have become showier and more theatrical. Bergdorf used to just use bedsheets to cover windows in progress, which sometimes unintentionally surrendered glimpses of things to come. These days they have their own fancy interior curtains with their name on them and for unveiling ceremonies luxurious-looking exterior curtains. One year they had acrobats(!). This year Saks had thundering music and an hour-long light show on their façade and fireworks. Though Bergdorf has gotten rid of a lot of windows in its recent renovation and I'm finding their Christmas series this year, Destination Extraordinary, underwhelming, so I don't know what they're doing.

I remember fondly when one night years ago, days before the official unveiling, entirely by chance I happened upon Bergdorf opening the curtains for a little look from the outside at the Christmas windows (their Carnival of the Animals series) in progress. Like this shot from "Breaking the Ice," before the mannequin gets her hood put up and the fringe polar bear and upholstery moose got put in. If I had been five minutes early and maybe 30 minutes later I would’ve missed it entirely. It felt like winning.

I love the night drives I took through the city to check out the windows at all times of the year. My car isn’t as reliable these days so I don’t do distances as often late night, and these days you never know when Emperor Trump will close some Midtown streets down because he has to go somewhere and needs to be secure.

It's nice seeing that my photo shooting skills have improved over the years!


If you're interested, these are my Christmas (mostly) window shots over the years I didn't already mention in this post.

Christmas 2007
Christmas 2008
Christmas 2009
Christmas 2010
Christmas 2011
Christmas 2012
Christmas 2013
Christmas 2014
Christmas 2015
Christmas 2016

Also, happy birthday, ride_4ever!