Mistaken Identitiy

Long before Donnie Darko my threatening bunnykin terrorized Chelsea.  He is waiting, albeit armless, to beat you in a life or death game of ping pong.  The Mapplethorpe portrait of that awkward fourteen year old boy puzzled all of us.  Maybe it was the son of a famous collector.  A call to the Mapplethorpe foundation revealed the true identity of its sitter.  Ingrid Sischy.

A Paul Thek drawing on newspaper hangs above that totally cool perforated metal cabinet .  

Autumn

The painting at rear was one of a number of nineteenth century works we received that month from Sotheby's.  We'd often get lots that were passed over at auction.  I especially loved working them into more modern setups.  The bikes are bamboo and yes the pumpkins did begin to rot after a while.

Seventeenth Street

What was originally going to be a 9/11 window (I did another) somehow morphed into this.  The red cross flag was the inspiration and these metal mesh cylinders suggested a skyline.  Somehow though the little map covered mannequin boy that had been lurking in the basement finally made it upstairs, then the floor was covered in white marabou feathers and that was that.  A wonderful Mapplethorpe calla lily bowl by Swid Powell and a pair of Auntie Mame lamps.  The text on the artwork reads, backwards, "Art is a dirty job but somebody's got to do it"

Silver Shoes at Seventeenth

Another early window @ 17th street.  The visual department of Gucci gave us all these amazing blue light fixtures.  They showed up in many windows until they were finally all sold off.  At the same time someone else gave us a few dozen chromed porcelain high heel shoes.  How could I not let them play together?  Pucci accessories and surrealist watercolors by the artist Ulli Mudi.  There were two portfolios of his work in the flatfiles in the basement along with so many other treasures.

Making that blue paint last in the skinny window on 77th Street

With Vintage maps and buoy line

Written in lipstick:  "Help I'm stuck at the beach and can't make it to Housing Works Beach Ball Event!"

Summer Prettiness

Route 66!

Expose Yourself To Art!

Seventeenth Street

Painting by Duncan Hannah

Minimal Chic at 23rd Street

A terrific leather bed and two really cool mannequins.  Mannequin donations were as important to the success of a window as the actual product was and I am so grateful to all the display departments around town that gave us their cast-offs.  When I started running windows for DKNY I understood what a big deal it was.  Mannequins are very expensive and companies are loathe to give them up until the last minute.  Not sure where these came from but the dude here had a clear acrylic head that weighed at least forty pounds.

All tied up

Valentines Day....

A lot of running back and forth with the staple gun.

17th Street

Terrific Paul Smith vests and a great Hans Wegner (?) chair.  Thank heavens by the way for those two plastic ficus trees.  I used them in so many windows and never watered them once.

So....

Someone thought this one was anti-semitic.  I have no clue.

Boudoir

Who wouldn't want a pearl strewn, leopard skin bed to come back to every night?  A coworker remarked that this is where Prince sleeps.  I threw in a saxophone for good measure.

Your Move

A chess inspired window, everything black and white checks and even a giant chess set for authenticity. The chairs are Josef Hoffman and the amazing paper crown was donated by Andre Leon Talley.  It had been a prop in a Bergdorf's window a few weeks earlier.

Ribbon Chairs

Gehry's bentwood "Ribbon Chairs"

Simply Irresistible

Although not intentional this one wound up a bit of a riff on the Robert Palmer video.  This time she's in command of her own army of studly clones.  Faceless, naked male mannequins each fitted out with work gloves and Hermes ties.  A customer complained that there were sexual undertones.  Undertones?  Hell it's right in your face, Lady.

Display Props from Hermes

I learned to do windows at Hermes, working alongside my brother Vincent.  Every two weeks our little band of artists and designers would descend upon the store and work into the night transforming the two display windows on 57th Street before the store moved to Madison.  I've never worked for a more enthusiastic or friendly client.  A real sense of quality, craftsmanship and style pervaded the company.  Maybe because it had been family owned for so long or maybe because they had never settled for anything less than perfection.  It was my first experience seeing, and handling luxury goods.  An Hermes product however is unlike a lot of other expensive clothing and accessories.  Every single thing was impeccably made, quietly beautiful and reflected the company's deep appreciation of the craftspeople and artisans who contributed to its creation.  We received the same respect from the company and in turn always did our best work.  These display walls arrived at Housing Works long after I left Hermes however, but the held us in good stead.

Making Music

Yes I actually made musical staff paper out of ribbon.  In the spirit of inclusivity the "conductor" is Asian-American, thanks to a huge donation of multi-culti mannequins.  Accordions by the way are a great crowd pleaser.  Every time I used one in a window it was a hit.

Cheap!

The table is actually made out of cardboard too.  The donor claimed it was one of Frank Gehry's from his cardboard line but we could never confirm.

Opera!

Giant paper umbrellas, an Hermes scarf girding his loins and some Erte prints.  

Forget who did the shoes...

One of the last ones - 17th Street

Yes that's a Farah Fawcett pillow.

M.A.S.H.

Camo to the max.  Luckily someone had even donated military camo-netting for the backdrop.  It weighed a ton but it looked amazing.

Manolo's on what had to be a counterfeit Hermes bag, I think.

One of the Summer Event Windows

Paper lanterns!

Just the two of us

Remember when Dolly the sheep was cloned?  Luck would have it that these two giant photos of rams (close enough) we donated.  It was easy to put together pairs of everything else:  Olive Oyl Dolls, pewter ram's horn steins and some "Party" lights from Target (which everyone was still excited about).

The old "Cafe" window on 23rd Street

Check out the portrait of "Daddy" on the wall.  

She can wait forever on her flokati, but he will never call.

17th Street

Great cherry read Eames chairs donated by Evan Lobel who has one of the best furniture shops in the city.  

Madame X

Inspired by the Sargent painting.

World AIDS Day 2000

Naturally we commemorated World AIDS Day each year with a special window.  In 2000 I created a particularly sad if beautiful tableau.  Fluorescent lights hanging over two stacks of paper.  One announcing the date, the other a sonnet by Edna Saint Vincent Millay.

 I had probably just seen the Yes Yoko Ono Show at the Japan Society and was influenced by her own spare and lyrical works.  Also I know I was thinking about Felix Gonzalez Torres, who used a similar sense of absence to call attention to the very visceral feelings of loss.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Danish Modern

Knockout

These little fiberglas(?) figurines depicting that season's collection were donated by Gucci.  Terrific chairs by Starck.

23rd Street

Another nightmare.  A grand guinol of mismatched mannequin parts and a clutch of self taught surrealist paintings.  Gold platform gladiator heels by Dolce if my memory serves me.  The observant Muslim newsstand guy took exception to this window.  "You do this?" He asked.  "Not good."

77th Street

Zen perfection.  In some ways the tiny window on the 77th street shop had a lot of good juju and windows there had their own peculiar brand of harmony.

And some more Asian inspiration, this time Chinese.

...and a few more

Scarpa chair.  Molto sexy!  Ensemble by Kenzo.

I really loved doing traditional setups.