People have a lot of negative things to say about living in a big city. To a certain extent, who can blame them for complaining? Cities are crowded, dirty, hectic, overpriced, dangerous, impersonal, and, of course, impossible to find parking in. While we’ll acknowledge that we city girls do have a lot to lament, those with a passion for fashion have a silver lining to residing in urban centers—the shopping. In any given fashion capital, there are tons of places for a girl to spend her plastic, ranging from tiny, locally-owned boutiques and designers’ ateliers, to flagship department stores and internationally known chains. With so much for sale, it comes as no surprise that the life of a city shopper has spawned a whole new art form: the storefront display. In metropolises, designers and merchants use their storefronts as canvases to make statements about their wares, and often resort to over-the-top arrangements to grab the attention of passersby. We did a bit of exploring along NYC’s lower 5th Avenue, a typical street we visit when we need to get our shop on, to help us determine what makes a window display wonderful.

Why They’re Sweet: First, the most obvious pro about the over-the-top storefront: eye candy. Just about every city building has at least one window facing the street, and if store owners can find a way to artistically arrange their goods, thus mastering the art of a relatively new profession called visual merchandising, they can make an enormous impression before potential shoppers have even entered the store. If nothing else, such elaborate storefronts provide a bit of entertainment for city dwellers as they make their daily treks to and from the nearest train station.

What we love most about bright, bold window displays is the whimsicality they lend to an otherwise grim city backdrop. What more pleasant surprise than to round a concrete corner and see something like Juicy Couture’s girlish paper-doll skirts, Kate Spade’s summer-appropriate hula hoops, or American Apparel’s mannequins-turned-acrobats? Storefronts like these provide the color and playfulness that, sadly, are missing from many aspects of daily city life.

Why They’re Sour: While an elaborate window is more “LOOK AT ME” than a plain one, marketing purists would argue that the over-the-top displays do not enhance a store’s goods, but detract from them. Take Kenneth Cole’s storefront, which features ten framed pieces of artwork and a measly two mannequins—and the mannequins are in T-shirts, at that! When we got closer to the display, we could see why KC’s camp had chosen the displays that they did; the ten framed pieces of art turned out to be part of a local initiative to support artists in difficult situations like mental illnesses, emotional disorders, AIDS, chemical dependencies, and homelessness. Likewise, the T-shirts on the two mannequins turned out to display pro-same sex marriage messages, an issue that is close to the designer’s heart.

While we would agree that social and political matters deserve as much attention as any piece of clothing, this is an example of a designer using a storefront in a sense so removed from the store goods that it does little to nothing by way of showing off what’s actually for sale. A designer of Kenneth Cole’s stature might be able to get away with something like this, but translate it to a smaller, lesser-known boutique and it doesn’t make much sense. Similarly, when we passed Victoria’s Secret, the only display was four black-and-white portraits of well-known Victoria’s Secret Angels. Artistic and dramatic, yes, but again the storefront made us wonder what people who swear fashion should be “all about the clothes” would think of such a choice.

Our Conclusion: In our opinion, the store displays that made the best impressions were those that balanced artistic prowess with front-and-center samples of what kinds of clothes we can expect to find inside. Anthropologie did an excellent job of this, as the shop’s sweet summer frocks were offset by colorful, attention-getting drapery that enhanced, rather than overshadowed, the looks. Another store with a relatively simple aesthetic was J.Crew, whose storefront featured corked bottles lined up like blades of grass beneath the phrase “Forever Summer;” a display like this certainly captures the artistic mood of the collection, while still showcasing clothing (in this case, menswear) in a manner that we clothes-addicts can appreciate.

Even the aforementioned American Apparel, a house known for being risqué in its advertising, managed to temper color and movement with straight-on looks at some of their best pieces. With so many great windows to peek into, it’s hard to think of fashion as anything less than art, and the urban landscape as anything less than a big, noisy, outdoor museum that we are lucky enough to have free admission to, any day of the week. And people ask us why we live in the city.

All images taken by the author, June 27, 2009