The Front of Retail Design: Store Windows Showcase

Retail shows off its visual prowess in the annual Store Windows Showcase from DDI, sister publication to Contract magazine. Take a look through these top eye-catching storefronts that are designed to draw in shoppers, and tell us in the comments section which ones are your top picks and why.

 
Anthropologie’s April 2011 windows at its Troy, Michigan, store celebrated Earth Day with this cork creation. Inspired by Anthropologie’s partnership with the Cork Forest Conservation Alliance (CFCA), the windows featured recycled cork wine stoppers, both left in their normal color and dyed. More than 4 million corks were donated by the CFCA, customers, and local businesses to create these giant, decorative plant balls. (Credit: Photos courtesy of Matthew Addonizio, Sabrina Ray and Rachael Gasperoni.)

 
Displayed at Hugo Boss’s 14th Street location in New York’s Meatpacking District, “Beautiful Things” featured an interactive neon window experience that the retailer collaborated on with artist Erika deVries. Written in deVries’s 7-year-old son’s handwriting, the phrase “I see beautiful things around you” glows from the windows. Hugo Boss invited onlookers to participate in the piece by photographing themselves standing within the “Beautiful Things” lit signage, and then posting the picture to Hugo Boss’s Facebook wall. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Hugo Boss.)

 
Saks Fifth Avenue New York originally used this Butterfly Router design as prosceniums framing each window on Fifth Avenue during the holidays, but Sanne Planting, associate director of windows production, revamped the idea and brought it back for Saks Fifth Avenue’s May 2011 window displays.
(Credit: Photo courtesy of Michael Ross.)

 
In May 2011, Bergdorf Goodman’s major Fifth Avenue windows in New York City were the site of an exhibition of 45 clothing items and accessories lent from the archives of Alexander McQueen. Designed by David Hoey, Bergdorf’s senior director of visual presentation, the window environments are replete with references to the late Alexander McQueen’s fashion designs, his runway shows, his inspirations and his verbal musings. The window exhibit was in tandem with the opening of “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Credit: Photos courtesy of Zehavi + Cordes.)

 
These windows for the Calvin Klein collection on New York’s Madison Avenue feature this enlarged, sepia-colored bird. Designed by Dale Rozmiarek, senior vice president at Calvin Klein Inc., the display was created to evoke the strength, intensity and power that describe the Calvin Klein brand. (Credit: Photos courtesy of James Lattanzio.)

See more inspiring storefront designs at DDI's Store Windows Showcase, Part I and Store Windows Showcase, Part II galleries.