Home For The Holidays

My second window for the semester! The assignment was to stick with the concept of "Home for the Holidays."

This was actually a really fun window to go shopping for. I ended up finding the product I was going to showcase at Home Goods for just $8, which left me plenty of room in my budget for props. The prop I bought was a box disguised as a book. I decided to illustrate the concept of hiding things; personal things, important things. Old memories, photographs, keys. Things of that nature. The "book" would be placed on a book shelf among other books, decorations and memorabilia that might be found on a book shelf in an old family home. I wanted to really create the feeling that the viewer was "home for the holidays" by building a setup that is warm, wintery, and cozy. No matter what kind of home the viewer grew up in, the display will evoke feelings of familiarity because this type of scene is something that pop culture has idolized as a typical old-fashioned, homey environment. 

As far as building the display goes, I knocked most of the prop shopping out in just one trip to Williamsburg. I picked up the old books at Salvation Army, which ranged from $1 - $3 a piece. I found the old keys and photographs at a place called Junk (actually, two places. Junk has two locations just a few blocks from each other). The old photos were less than a dollar a piece, and the keys were $5 a piece. 

Linear Equations

Finished my first window a while back!

Now, I do believe that my concept was strong here. I really do. I do have a bone or two to pick with the execution, though. Let me start.

The assignment was to pick from a list of trends. I chose "Linear Equations," which pretty much speaks for itself: clean, straight lines, geometric shapes, etc. My concept was to have a pair of hosiery legs in the dead center of the display close together at the bottom and separate at the top, essentially in a "V" shape. The stockings I chose had a diagonal grid pattern, and the background was to be a continuation of the pattern in the stockings. There would be a pair of bright salmon pink tights layered underneath the sheer stockings to create a pop of color against a white background. This way, the viewer's attention would immediately be drawn to the product. The area directly behind the legs would be left blank, so as to not distract from the product. 

This was my concept. Now, let me explain how I made it and what happened.

Being a poor college student, my budget for this project had to be kept small. I called up a local mannequin/display supplier and asked how much a pair of clear plastic hosiery legs would run me. $40 was just more than I could afford to spend on something like that. I did some asking around my department and one of my professors found an old mannequin for me that was ready to go on the chopping board. I ended up sawing the legs off of the mannequin and using those. The main problem with these mannequin legs was that they were big and heavy. The other problem with the legs was that there was no easy way to get them to stand up the way I wanted them to. I ended up building a sort of stand out of wooden dowels and self-drying clay for the hollow legs to be placed over. It wasn't as sturdy as I had hoped it would be. A few days after I installed my display, one of the legs ended up falling over. Additionally, the legs were just too big for the display. The shell I built it inside of is much bigger than the window frame it goes inside of. I failed to take into account how much of the display would be cut off by the window frame. 

I created the background out of what must have been 5 or 6 rolls of electrical tape. It took an unreasonable amount of hours, but I'm fairly satisfied with how that came out. 

Now that it's done and I'm thinking about it, I know what I could have done to make it better. I honestly probably should have just invested in the hosiery legs. They're smaller, lighter, easier to pose, and would have made my whole display look better. I also think that the display would have looked better if the side walls were placed at an angle so that they could be seen better from the front. There's always next time!