We also know and work with good folks who adore branding and branded stuff. We love and are entertained as we tag along on trips to fashion havens, peeking into closets full of Rick Owens and Ted Baker and Louboutin.
But our interest is more curious than personal. There's one thing we and our fashionista friends agree on: we LOVE shop display windows. The bigger, the better. The flashier, the more fun!
How lucky that we were able to catch the very last day of the Shakespeare Windows at Selfridges!
Selfridges, London's historic department store, invited several top designers to fill their windows with interpretations of the Bard's famous plays. Some were whimsical; several windows simply displayed interpretations of the Elizabethan ruff. Prada's ruff of quill pens made of paper was our favourite.
Of course the front windows were reserved for more spectacular displays. Alexander McQueen placed the iconic Hamlet and Yorick in a library instead of a graveyard, giving it either an accidental or homageic nod to Sherlock Holmes.
Jun Takahashi of Undercover dressed the three daughters of King Lear in voluminous silk with shimmering feathers, armour, and crowns.
The Tempest inspired Vivienne Westwood's characteristic flamboyance, with boats on sandy shores, the lovers Miranda and Ferdinand, and Prospero all in gold with Ariel sporting a playful haircut and an androgynous fuchsia tunic.
A.F. Vandevorst picked Othello's tragic Desdemona, her beautiful soul in fabric printed with lines from the play rising from its fragile, shrouded body.
Only Gareth Pugh's bizarrely magnificent constructions could depict Prospero in his full power, seated on his throne. We weren't kidding when we said it was the last day of the windows.
Later that night after a good dinner with our friends, we headed back down to the bus stop only to see the window where this had been:
Magnificent but fleeting; only a thin skin painted over reality, easily dismantled. Shakespeare would have approved.
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