Window Art

Elna Nykänen Andersson
Posted August 1, 2012 in More

Window art

Dresses waving on flagpoles, coats hanging on a miniature model of the leaning tower of Pisa, perfume bottles as heads for wooden dolls doing karate and fencing – over the past year, department store NK’s innovative window displays have become the talk of the town.

Passers-by stop to watch the playful decorations, which in the last twelve months have featured themes ranging from the Olympics and international traveling to dancing and interior design. The products are there too, of course, but always presented in a surprising, fun and innovative way. Full of color, quirky objects and careful compositions, the installations are like small works of art – and indeed, some of the items have been auctioned at Bukowskis.

The change for NK came last year, when the department store ended its 16-year long cooperation with a decoration firm and hired a new one for the job instead. The account went to JoAnn Tan Studio, and Tan herself became the creative director for the store’s windows. Her background is with the Italian fashion house Moschino, and she’s well- known for her window displays for the brand and even the interior of Milan’s Maison Moschino hotel.

Another key player in the NK team is Cilla Winbladh, head of the studio. Winbladh says that the brief from the department store required taking the window design to an international level.

“They wanted to take the next step. In his time, Josef Sachs (the founder of NK) talked about creating a commercial street theatre, that’s what they wanted to do. Not just to entertain the public once around Christmas, but all the time,” she says, referring to NK’s famous Christmas windows.

The display is changed every other week, as all the different departments at NK need to get a chance to market their products. A lot of hard work goes into each installation.

“Many objects are handmade from scratch,” says Winbladh. “We manufacture things both here in Sweden and in Italy, where there’s a long tradition of beautiful window displays – something that is still very rare in Sweden.”

Like in fashion, production times are long in the window display business, and although it’s still summer, JoAnn, Cilla and the rest of the team are already working on Christmas. But for the rest of us, first, it’s time for some play. In mid-August, the windows fill with Duplo lego, as children from 3 to 6 are allowed to create their own installations. The building process will also be filmed, and the films will be shown in the windows on Hamngatan.

 

 

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