“It’s really our love letter to New York,” said Linda Fargo, Bergdorf Goodman’s senior vice president, women’s fashion director and store presentation, explaining the holiday windows on Fifth Avenue, which tribute the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Museum of the Moving Image, The New York Botanical Garden, New York Philharmonic, New York Historical Society and UrbanGlass.
“Stitch, stitch, stitch,” Fargo said, verbalizing the intricate hand-crafted floral elements of The New York Botanical Garden window, with a psychedelic, Summer of Love-inspired tableau of plants identified by the Latin nomenclature like sassafras albidum. “We made the selections based on names that we thought would translate well in fiber,” said Joanna Burke, an artist who assisted on creating the window, along with BG and Burke & Pryde Studio.
Related Galleries
Fargo, wearing birdcage earrings, a DVF sequined dress and J. Mendel fur, complimented the theatricality of the windows, which were ornate, handcrafted and filled with vivid colors, fantasy, cultural and historical references and a mélange of materials — papier-mâché, neon, video, resin casting and the fiber arts. The idea was to bring the seven cultural institutions to life through the windows. “It’s a perfect storm celebrating music, film, fashion, nature,” Fargo said.
“While exploring this theme, we knew the windows had to be dynamic and multilayered to evoke the excitement of New York today, while simultaneously celebrating the city’s past,” said David Hoey, senior director of visual presentation. “Our institutional partners provided an array of subject matter to inspire us, so we crafted a completely different type of window for each organization. And since we love putting on a show, we made the windows kaleidoscopic and entertaining.”
The holiday partnership between Bergdorf’s and the institutions includes one-of-a kind cultural experiences and exclusive gifts with a percentage of the retail price from each product purchased donated to the corresponding institution, while each institution will receive 100 percent of the proceeds from each experience purchased through Dec. 24.
For the American Museum of Natural History, Bergdorf’s created architectural features of the museum’s lobby and a band of bejeweled dinosaurs. For the Museum of the Moving Image, icy film cameras flank an extravagant Art Deco movie marquee and there are running black-and-white film clips. The New York Philharmonic is tributed with a spectacle of flashing red neon musical instruments, and the New-York Historical Society window contains a trove of New York City historical artifacts, sculptures and portraits, created by New York artist Mark Gagnon. And UrbanGlass had four contemporary artists commissioned to create signature glass objects, which were fabricated at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn.