Glam Gardens Blossoms Again at Saks

Saks Fifth Avenue’s “Glam Gardens”  campaign looks like a perennial.

The second installment of the beauty event, among the largest on the luxury chain’s calendar, starts today and runs through May 24. Planning has already begun to stage the event in 2017.

The format, this year themed “The Secret Garden,” will feature beauty products from 30 vendors set in paper-based botanical scenes — exclusives, launches and bestsellers included — as well as a “high tea” on Fifth Avenue, complementary beauty services, a 36-page Mother’s Day catalog for beauty and contemporary fashion and a 16-page Harper’s Bazaar beauty insert. The event is happening in the beauty departments of all 40 Saks Fifth Avenue stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Pink roses will frame Dior’s newest fragrance, La Colle Noire; Mediterranean honeysuckle and white and blue flowers surround the Aerin fragrance, and magnolias highlight the DeCorte Vi-Fusion Essence. Among other brands participating are Kiehl’s Since 1851, Penhaligon’s, Lancôme, Burberry, Chanel, Clinique, Clarins, Nars, Molton Brown, La Mer, Bulgari, Viktor & Rolf, Jo Malone and Tom Ford.

“You will see Saks Fifth Avenue and its main floor planted in a very elegant way, with boxwood topiaries on the outside, big giant trees in the front of the store, and down the major walkways these wonderful arches of origami flowers, allowing the brands and the event itself to breathe within the space,” said Mark Briggs, executive vice president of creative for Hudson’s Bay Co., parent of Saks Fifth Avenue.

At Saks’ Manhattan flagship, the windows showcase origami sculptures in a clean white framework so the brands and their colors stand out. For last year’s event, beauty departments were filled with Ecuadorian roses.

Weather permitting on Tuesday afternoon, Saks will erect a makeshift outdoor cafe on Fifth Avenue for a high tea for the general public.

Saks, like many retailers, is having a tough year, though Glam Gardens could bring a lift to the business by elevating the selling floors into more ‘experiential’ settings. At the flagship, 300 Glam Gardens-related events will be held through the promotion period, compared to 250 last year, though, according to Briggs, “each store has a very full calendar” of  activities.

MasterCard is supporting the event by re-creating the Snaks Cafe on the fifth floor into a “secret garden” cafe  with “living walls.”

To bolster the event, Saks will host a floral cart in Bryant Park on May 4, creating YouTube videos and partnering with Snapchat on an exclusive filter from which customers can join the Glam Gardens experience within a nearby radius. All told at the flagship, there will be over 1,000 handmade paper flowers, 120 boxwood topiaries and 10 full-grown climbing trees.