You may still be wrapping this year’s Christmas presents but window dressers throughout the property are already projecting their festive presentations for December 2019. Just how do they establish these often impressive sights and how do they hook in the shoppers?
Christmas showings are a staple of many a High-pitched Street during the festive season. Alongside the traditionally bred visions rooted in the nativity and fairytales are the more unusual the main theme of sparkly sprouts, llamas and naughty polar bears.
But the road to success starts not on 1 December, but far, far earlier.
Mark Neilly, senior creative job manager at Hello Flamingo, which specialises in window display design for firms like Habitat and Selfridges, said UK retailers start scheming in January.
“Christmas window and in-store strategies are ordinarily the biggest projects of its first year for labels and retailers, and it is where most visual merchandising and marketing budgets are allocated to, ” he explains.
Retailers often take a cue from the “world class and innovate” showings showcased in New York City, drawing inspiration from the exteriors of stores like Saks Fifth Avenue.
Image copyrightAlamyImage caption Saks Fifth Avenue in New York constructs employ of neon lights and colouring to create an eye-catching presentation
At the Fenwick department store in Newcastle, they are already “well on the way with the issues and creative notions for 2019 “, says its is chairman of creative, Paul Baptiste.
“Theatre and storytelling[ is] at the heart of what we do, ” he says.
“The window displays generate memories for generations of our communities and they will always have an important place in each of our stores.”
This year, scenes from Raymond Briggs’s classic, The Snowman, fill the window.
It is a celebration of the story’s 40 th anniversary and features some of the film’s most well-known moments, in particular the ice-skating snowmen and the flight around the globe.
Image copyrightFenwickImage caption Fenwick’s window display features scenes from The Snowman Image copyrightFenwickImage caption The storage hopes it delivers Raymond Briggs’s tale to life
Drawing on fairytales and well-known tales is a tried and experimented itinerary, but each year brings with it the desire to come up with something fresh.
Even with 160 years of Christmas display experience behind them, Harrods in London tries to do something different with their 27 windows.
“Every year we face the challenge of reinventing the sorcery of Christmas in a fun, inventive direction while staying true-blue to the traditions of the season, ” says the shop’s creative visual head, Alex Wells-Greco.
“A large-scale part of our inspiration has been the concepts of festive banquet, something we likewise celebrated in a 1950 s window display, which featured a giant Christmas cake, and a number of miniature chefs.
“[ This year] we’ve even erected an 8ft Christmas tree on Hans Crescent, contained within sparkling Brussels sprouts and embellished lobsters, and topped with a glitzy champagne bottle.”
Image copyrightGetty/ Scott McPartlandImage caption Saks have all along provided inspiration for Christmas displays Image copyrightHarrodsImage caption “Festive feasting” has influenced Harrods’ display this year
Others favour a more immersive approach.
At Castle Gardens in Sherborne, Dorset, the display features music and reeks, and is all about “tantalising the senses”, says administrator Louise Burks.
This year’s display features a “unicorn dreamland”, a 1980 s-themed section, llamas, pom-poms and Frida Kahlo embroidered cushions.
Izzy Pilcher painstaking hung slinky spring playthings and suspending Rubik’s Cubes from the ceiling, as well as making a wall of shiny tinsel.
Image caption More modern showings have featured llamas and Frida Kahlo cushions
“It’s a tactile region and we want visitors to touch everything, really be absorbed in it, ” she says.
“But it’s a weekly job only to re-hang and untangle them.”
Straying from the traditional is increasingly common practice and Castle Gardens, for example, has featured Strictly Come Dancing, Great British Bake Off and I’m a Celebrity in its previous showings.
But retailers are also focusing more on the concepts of gifting, says Mr Neilly, promoting the season’s “must-haves” which can handily be bought in store.
Image caption Marks and Spencer’s windows in Nottingham were criticised
The shop’s apparent display faux pas was not the only one to stimulate headlines.
A pair of stuffed polar endures re-arranged in a compromising posture likewise scandalized customers on the Isle of Man, imparting – as one person quipped 0 “new meaning to riding the Polar Express”.
Meanwhile, on Oxford Street in London, a major retailer scrapped employing sham snow after the store pointed up resembling a “foam party”, says Mr Neilly.
“[ It] “mustve been” washed out by store staff on an hourly basis.”
Image copyrightGetty Images
The windows of Christmas past
Macy’s in New York is said to have pioneered the tradition of the Christmas window in the 1870 s
Although the animations in the window displays of the grands magasins in Paris are said to have inspired Fenwick
Le Bon Marche’s firstly Christmas window was in 1893 – afterwards followed by Printemps, Galeries Lafayette and Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville
The first Harvey Nichols Christmas windows were installed in the 1890 s
It are not aware when Harrods started doing Christmas windows, but one of the earliest was in 1931, featuring a tableau of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
Image caption Harrods retained the 12,000 exterior light bulbs added as a emblem in 1959
Image caption Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland has been a repetition Christmas theme for Harrods, featured here in 1969
Image copyright Fenwick 
