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1. The history of visual merchandising
In these attention-seeking, award-winning windows designed by Thomas Heatherwick for Harvey Nichols in London, the scheme explodes through the glass on to the exterior of the store.
The Development of the Department Store
The first shopkeepers tried to lure consumers into their stores by ostentatiously exhibiting their names or by displaying products in their windows or on tables in the street, proving that they were open for business and proud of their produce.
To this day, many florists not only pack their windows with the finest blooms, but also trail them outside the store and on to the pavement to entice customers across the threshold using colour and scent. Similarly, barbers sometimes push a chair containing an unsuspecting client up to the window in order to prove their skill and popularity.
With the advent in the 1840s of new technology that allowed the production of large panes of glass, department stores were responsible for taking the art of window display to a higher level, using their large windows as stages, some of them as theatrical as a Broadway show. Today colour, props and atmospheric lighting on many occasions arrogantly overshadow the merchandise, as visual merchandising extends beyond its role of supporting the wares and becomes an art form, creating a statement and provoking a reaction. Stores such as Londonâs Harvey Nichols have collaborated with well-known designers and artists to produce eye-catching schemes that make the merchandise part of an artistic work.
Harrods opened in London in 1849 as a small shop selling groceries, perfume and stationery, and grew to become the renowned department store it is today. Mitsukoshi, Tokyoâs leading department store, was established even earlier, in 1673, as a kimono specialist. Its innovation was the concept of bringing the customer to a store rather than selling from door to door.
It is the department store, with its huge array of merchandise and vast amount of window space, that is the pioneer of the window display. A relatively recent phenomenon, it began in the nineteenth century in Paris, where it was Aristide Boucicaut who first had the idea of setting up this kind of store. He wanted to create a shop designed to sell all sorts of merchandise, but also wanted to attract crowds of people who could wander freely about in a little âtown within the townâ. In 1852 he opened the worldâs first department store, Le Bon MarchĂ©.
The concept of the department store spread to the United States, and the famous stores we know today opened: Macyâs in New York in 1858, Marshall Fieldâs in Chicago in 1865, Bloomingdaleâs in New York in 1872 and Wanamakerâs in Philadelphia in 1876.
It may not be the most innovative display by todayâs standards, but this window at Marshall Fieldâs, Chicago, in the early 1900s caused a public reaction at the time.
Bon Marché department store in Paris in the late nineteenth century offered an impressive shopping experience for its customers through the grandeur of its architecture.
No one retailer or department store can possibly take the credit for producing the first eye-catching staged window display. However, we can certainly look to various individuals who helped to set the standards for todayâs visual merchandisers.
It was the American retail entrepreneur Gordon Selfridge who had grand aspirations to bring the concept of the department store â and with it the language of visual merchandising â to Edwardian London. After leaving his post as managing director of the majestic Marshall Fieldâs department store in Chicago and emigrating to England, he arrived in London with great designs to build a long-awaited purpose-built, modern department store.
On 15 March 1909 Londoners witnessed the unveiling of Selfridgeâs ÂŁ400,000 dream. The new store became the benchmark of British retailing, its vast plate-glass windows filled with the finest merchandise its proprietor had to offer. Selfridge also revolutionized the world of visual merchandising by leaving the window lights on at night, when the store was closed, so that the public could enjoy the presentations while returning home from the theatre.
Selfridge also included a few innovations in-store for his customers, including a soda fountain for the sociable and a silence room for the less so. He was never one to miss a promotional opportunity. When, in July 1909, the French inventor Louis BlĂ©riot crash-landed his aeroplane in a field in Kent after flying across the English Channel, Selfridge had the plane packed on to a train at 2 a.m. and on display in his store at 10 oâclock the same morning. Fifty thousand people queued to see it that day. By 1928 Selfridges had doubled in size to become the store we now know, all thanks to the hype and success of Gordon Selfridge.
In the same year that Selfridge embarked on his British retail venture, another American entrepreneur, Frank Winfield Woolworth, opened his first British store, in Liverpool. His business model revolved around the customer securing a bargain, and he famously said: âI believe that a good penny-and-sixpence store, run by a live Yankee, would be a sensation here.â Woolworth had had great success in the United States with his five-and-dime stores, and thought the northwest of England would be the ideal place to test his retail concept. It worked.
The coats on the mannequins in this 1950s window display at Printemps in Paris may look elegant, but the mannequins are rigid and not grouped to engage with each other.
This fishmonger/poulterer has created an artistic display that would not disgrace a visual merchandiser today.
Unlike Selfridge, who relied on the quality of the product and on retail theatre, Woolworth played to the customer by offering products at affordable prices. He was so confident in his offer that he had the first self-service fixtures designed, so that customers were free to handle the stock and take it directly to the service desk without having to interact with a member of sales staff. Woolworthâs popularity grew and he expanded across the United Kingdom. House prices even increased if a Woolworthâs opened in the area. By the time of his death in 1919, he owned over a thousand stores across the world.
Unfortunately, his business did not respond quickly enough to change, and it started to decline at the end of the twentieth century. On 13 October 2015, more than a hundred years after it was launched, the British arm of the business ceased trading. However, the Woolworth name still represents credible businesses in Mexico, South Africa and Australia.
As part of a Rick Owens promotion at Selfridges, London, in 2014, a giant statue of the designer stood in front of the storeâs iconic façade.
Reflecting the times
The 1920s brought an explosion of creativity in the arts and fashion, which spilled over into the art of the window display, and once again it was Paris that led the way. Frustrated that their canvases could be seen only in the homes of the rich and famous, many of the cityâs young artists took their skills to the masses. Soon the arcades of the capital were occupied with Art Deco-inspired themes, and fashion designers now found an innovative and exciting static runway on which to show their creations.
The department stores of New Yorkâs Fifth Avenue followed suit. The surrealist artist Salvador DalĂ can be credited with setting the American creative standard in window display, after he was approached to dress two windows for the Bonwit Teller store in the 1930s. Street art took on another dimension when he unveiled his âNarcissusâ displays, but it was a step too far, and his outrageous pastiches were removed after complaints. Yet DalĂâs lack of success did not deter other would-be artists from beginning their careers as window dressers. Andy Warhol began his career in the stores of New York while still at college, and Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg all worked as window dressers in the 1950s.
The 1960s saw the creation of affordable ready-to-wear, and Mary Quant was one of the first designers, in 1959, to use the window of her London store as a showcase for her collections as well ...
