Window dresser explained

Window dressers are retail workers who arrange displays of goods in shop windows or within a shop itself. Such displays are themselves known as "window dressing". They may work for design companies contracted to work for clients or for department stores, independent retailers, airport or hotel shops.

Alone or in consultation with product manufacturers or shop managers they artistically design and arrange the displays and may put clothes on mannequins—or use the services of a mannequin dresser^[1] —and display the prices on the products.

They may hire joiners and lighting engineers to augment their displays. When new displays are required they have to dismantle the existing ones, and they may have to maintain displays during their lifetimes. Some window dressers hold formal display design qualifications.

Notable window dressers

• Giorgio Armani, the fashion designer, once worked as a window dresser.^[2]
• L. Frank Baum, better known for his novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published a treatise on the art of window dressing.^[3]
• Karl Bissinger, American mid-century photographer of notable artists, was a window-dresser at Lord & Taylor earlier in his career.^[4]
• Henry Clarke, a Vogue photographer, first worked in the 1940s as a window dresser for I. Magnin, luxury department store in San Francisco before becoming a background and accessorising assistant at the Vogue New York studio, where he learned to photograph by observing the different styles of Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn and Horst P. Horst.^[5]
• Salvador Dalí, the surrealist artist, was commissioned by Bonwitt Teller in 1939 to do a store window installation, which made headlines.^[6]
• George Dureau, an American photographer and artist who inspired Robert Mapplethorpe, began his career at D. H. Holmes department store^[7]
• Simon Doonan, columnist for Slate, dressed windows for Barneys department store.^[8]
• Lieutenant Hubert Gruber, a character from the sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!, was a window dresser before his spell in the army. This is frequently alluded to, mainly for comedic effect.
• Roy Halston Frowick, known simply as Halston, a 1970s American fashion designer, worked as a window dresser while taking a night course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
• David Hoey is famed for his work at Bergdorf Goodman, most notably on their Christmas season spectaculars.^[9]
• Victor Hugo, a Venezuelan born artist, and one-time assistant to Andy Warhol, produced window dressings for Halston in the 1970s, becoming the first to transform windows and mannequins into Pop Art.^[10]
• Don Imus, American radio personality once worked as a department store window dresser.^[11]
• Ellen Jose, an Australian indigenous artist and photographer.^[12]
• Alice Lex-Nerlinger, after graduation from art school, worked as a shop window decorator in the department store Tempelhof from 1916–18, an experience which brought her closer to sisters in the labour movement, the subjects of her early photography and montage.^[13]
• Peter Lindbergh, German fashion photographer and film director, worked as a window dresser for the Karstadt and Horten department stores in Duisburg.^[14]
• Raymond Loewy, early in his career, dressed windows for Macy's in New York.^[15]
• Christine McVie worked as a window dresser in London in the 1960s.^[16]
• American stage director and film director Vincente Minnelli's first job was at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago as a window dresser
• Gene Moore was a leading 20th century window dresser.^[17]
• Molina, a fictional character, one of the principals of Manuel Puig's novel Kiss of the Spider Woman, was a window dresser prior to his incarceration.^[18]
• Rhoda Morgenstern, a fictional character from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff Rhoda, makes her living as a window dresser in Minneapolis and New York City.^[19]
• Walter Pfeiffer, Swiss photographer.^[20]
• Terry Richardson, American fashion and portrait photographer, was a Bloomingdale's window dresser in the 1950s.^[21]
• Henk Schiffmacher, Dutch tattoo artist, was a window dresser at the De Bijenkorf^[22]
• Joel Schumacher, the film director, was once a window dresser employed by the store Henri Bendel.^[23]
• E. C. Segar left his job as a projectionist and worked at decorating jobs including paper hanging, painting and window dressing, before deciding on a career as a cartoonist.
• Henry Talbot worked as a department store window-dresser in London in the 1930s before being shipped to Australia on the Dunera, where he became a fashion photographer and partner in business of Helmut Newton
• Hans Hermann Weyer, a German seller of fraudulent nobility and academics titles and flamboyant member of the international jet set who became an honorary consul of Bolivia in Luxembourg, was in youth an apprentice window dresser.^[24]

Notes and References

1. News: Sculptors at a Lafayette mannequin factory are shaping more realistic body types for stores worldwide . . Carol McKinley . 30 December 2019 . 30 December 2019 .
2. News: Giorgio Armani celebrates 40 years in fashion with Cate and Leo . London . The Daily Telegraph . Lisa . Armstrong . 9 June 2015.
3. Web site: Window Dressing: The Art and Artists - Media - Utne Reader. Max. Mosher. from Worn Fashion. Journal. Utne.
4. Grimes, William. "Karl Bissinger, Portraitist, Dies at 94", The New York Times, November 25, 2008. Accessed November 26, 2008.
5. Web site: Enid Nemymay . Henry Clarke, 77, Photographer of High Fashion for Magazines - The New York Times . The New York Times . 5 May 1996.
6. News: THE ULTIMATE MARKETPLACE; It's Not Just Window Dressing . The New York Times . Louise . Lague . Window . Shopper . 12 November 1989.
7. Book: The new encyclopedia of Southern culture. Volume 21, Art & architecture. Bonner, Judith H.,, Pennington, Estill Curtis,, University of Mississippi. Center for the Study of Southern Culture.. 14 January 2013. 978-0-8078-6994-9. Chapel Hill. 825970770.
8. Book: Simon Doonan. Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales from a Life in Fashion. 1 August 2001. Viking Studio. 978-0-14-100362-7.
9. News: Behind the Scenes: Bergdorf Goodman's Holiday Window Display. The Wall Street Journal . Chelsea . Matiash . 17 November 2014 .
10. Kent. Rosemary. 24 May 1976. Drama Department: Comedy, Sex and Violence In Store Windows. New York Magazine. New York Media, LLC. 9. 21. 85. 0028-7369.
11. Don Imus, Divisive Radio Shock Jock Pioneer, Dead at 79. Rolling Stone. 28 December 2019.
12. Web site: Ellen Jose biography. Allas. Tess. 2011. Design and Art Australia Online.
13. Web site: LEX-NERLINGER, ALICE - Das Verborgene Museum. www.dasverborgenemuseum.de. 15 July 2019.
14. Web site: The extraordinaire Peter Lindbergh. 21 March 2018.
15. Web site: raymod loewy biography . designboom.com . 23 November 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20151123185236/http://www.designboom.com/portrait/loewy_bio.html . 23 November 2015 . dead . 3 February 2019.
16. Web site: Newsmaker: Christine McVie . https://web.archive.org/web/20140525210944/http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/newsmaker-christine-mcvie . 25 May 2014 . Kevin Hackett . 16 January 2014 . thenational.ae .
17. News: Gene Moore, 88, Window Display Artist, Dies . The New York Times . 26 November 1998.
18. Book: Davis, Kimberly Chabot. Postmodern Texts and Emotional Audiences. 1 January 2007. Purdue University Press. 9781557534798. en.
19. Book: Trager, James. The New York Chronology: The Ultimate Compendium of Events, People, and Anecdotes from the Dutch to the Present. 7 September 2010. Zondervan. 9780062018601. en.
20. Web site: The Cult of Walter Pfeiffer. 16 December 2017. Aperture Foundation NY. en-US. 31 March 2020.
21. Book: Gross, Michael, 1952-. Focus : the secret, sexy, sometimes sordid world of fashion photographers. 29 August 2017. 978-1-4767-6347-7. New York. 930364239.
22. Web site: Henk Schiffmacher. Kintaro Publishing. en. 31 March 2020.
23. News: FILM / Damaged goods in the shop window: He's upset America's Hispanics and Koreans, and he's not exactly the toast of Los Angeles. Is Joel Schumacher sorry? Is he hell. Sheila Johnston reports . London . The Independent . Sheila . Johnston . 29 May 1993.
24. John Vinocur, "For German Who ‘Awarded’ Titles, First Gold, Then Bars", The New York Times, 16 March 1978.