The Greatest Showman: Bloomingdale's holiday windows

Two brothers Joseph and Lyman Bloomingdale    opened their store, Bloomingdale Brothers Great East Side Bazaar, on 56th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan, in 1872.  At that time the  risky location  was , situated in a working class district far from the main shopping district. The first day’s takings were $3.68. Today, Bloomingdale's  is America’s only nationwide, full-line, upscale department store. Bloomingdale's currently operates 31 stores in United states  in  New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Florida, California, Nevada and Georgia with  headquarters in New York.

For decades the major department stores in New York City have put on a spectacle within their street-level window and Bloomingdale's is no exception.

  This  2017 year's theme  for the Bloomingdale's   holiday windows is the holiday movie,  "The Greatest Showman," from Twentieth Century Fox.  "The Greatest Showman"  is a 2017 American period musical drama film   inspired by the story of how P. T. Barnum started the Barnum & Bailey Circus and the lives of its attractions.  At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, the film received three nominations: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Comedy or Musical and Best Original Song.

P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was one of the greatest entertainment entrepreneurs in history. His traveling shows, museums, and world-famous circus helped him amass a multi-million-dollar fortune on his way to becoming personal friends with such iconic figures as Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria of England, and Mark Twain.
 Most of us know him because of the circus, but he was actually an incredibly important figure in American history. "The Atlantic" named P.T. Barnum to its list of 100 most influential figures in American history.
In April of 1874 P. T. Barnum’s Great Roman Hippodrome had opened on an entire square in New York City between Fourth and Madison avenues. Barnum traveled around the world purchasing animals and attractions for the new Hippodrome.

Barnum wrote one of America’s first celebrity autobiographies.   In 1880, a century before Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, Barnum pioneered the celebrity how-to-get-rich book, writing The Art of Money-Getting. 

  “Money is in some respects like fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.” -he wrote. Barnum  also said  : "The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves".
In 1882, Barnum purchased a gargantuan 6-ton African elephant named “Jumbo” from the London Zoological Society.  It marked the start of “Jumbomania” in the United States.     The elephant’s fame   helped popularize the word “jumbo” as a synonym for “large".

The six windows  with over 7 million Swarovski crystals along Lexington Avenue glitter with scenes from the movie "The Greatest Showman," including strong men and snake charmers, plus interactive elements and songs from the film.





Tiffany Holiday Windows 2017

Tiffany was founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young in   Connecticut in 1837.Tiffany designs were worn by famous U.S. families such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Posts, Huttons and Morgans. Athletes, Hollywood stars, and European royalty were also Tiffany customers. The Tiffany  flagship store has been a Fifth Avenue gem since it opened more than 77 years ago on October 21, 1940

In addition to impressive window displays, the interior of the store features beautiful trees with decorations in the store's signature blue motif.
This years each of the windows designed by Gene Moore illustrates the magic of giving a Tiffany gift while the handcrafted elements and theatrical lighting draws the eye to the sparkling Tiffany product on display










Saks Fifth Avenue: Snow white

"Once upon a time in midwinter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood. As she sewed she looked up at the snow and pricked her finger with her needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red on the white looked so beautiful that she thought to herself, "If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this frame." Soon afterward she had a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood, and therefore they called her Little Snow-White"

 This is the beginning of the 19th-century German fairy tale "Snow White" published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm -The Brothers Grimm -  in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales. Over the next forty-five years the Brothers Grimm published a total of seven editions of the fairy tales, and their reputation steadily grew. By the turn of the century, the Tales of the Brothers Grimm had become the second best-selling book in Germany, behind only the Bible.

The final, 1857 edition of the "Snow White"  has a great deal in common with the most famous retelling, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves(1938) .  It was  the first feature-length animated film that Walt Disney created. And it was    the first animated feature to be produced in English and in Technicolor. 


Originally the movie was budgeted at $250,000, but after production ran over it ballooned to $1.5 million. Disney put his future on the line, borrowing most of the $1.5 million that he used to make the film.  19-year-old Adriana Caselotti voiced Snow White. Walt wanted to keep Snow White's voice special, so he held Adriana to a very strict contract and she was never allowed to perform on stage or film again.

Charlie Chaplin, who attended the Hollywood premiere, told the Los Angeles Times that the film “even surpassed our high expectations. In Dwarf Dopey, Disney has created one of the greatest comedians of all time.”
Snow White was the highest grossing film ever for exactly one year,  and the   profits from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs allowed Walt to build Disney Studios in Burbank.

 This year  the beloved Disney classic Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs is celebrating its 80th anniversary with a spectacular display in one of New York’s most prestigious store windows.
The department store Saks Fifth Avenue is featuring  animated windows re-telling the classic fairy tale.    One of the most famous luxury retailers in the world, Saks Fifth Avenue has long been the destination for fashion-conscious men and women. The flagship store at 611 Fifth Avenue at 50th Street opened in 1924 and has served the stylish for over three-quarters of a century.


For the first time in 94 years, all of its 14 windows are animated, bringing the tale to life. Each window   depicts  a different scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, beautifully translating the iconic story into real-life delights. Vignettes  include Snow White dancing among woodland creatures, the seven dwarfs “heigh-ho!”-ing home from a day’s work in the diamond caves, and the Wicked Queen’s mischievous trickery with the infamous red apple. Also new to the windows, this year is a 3-D layering technique which incorporates original artwork from the film into the backdrops for each display.
The 49th and 50th street windows feature several custom-made ball gowns for "a 21st-century Snow White."  The windows will be on display at the flagship store in Manhattan until January 2.










Breakfast At Tiffany's: Blue Box Cafe

The history of Tiffany dates back to 1837 when   Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young  opened a “stationery and fancy goods” store with a $1,000 advance from Tiffany's father.  Forty years later in 1887 Charles  Tiffany     shocked the world by buying one third of the French Crown Jewels, earning himself the nickname “The King of Diamonds".   Today, Tiffany has more than 300 stores and employs 12,200 people across the world. The little blue box became the ubiquitous symbol for luxury, love and diamonds. This  color,   now  known as Tiffany Blue, was used on the cover of Tiffany's Blue Book, first published in 1845.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958 and  sold to Harper's Bazaar for $2,000.  In 2013 Truman Capote’s  typed manuscript  with the author’s handwritten edits has sold in 2013 for about $306,000 at auction to a Russian billionaire  Igor Sosin. Capote’s handwritten notations include changing the femme fatale’s name from Connie Gustafson to the now-iconic Holly Golightly.

The novella appeared in the November, 1958 issue. The   novel    inspired the classic 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn .  The title Breakfast at Tiffany's is drawn from an anecdote popular among Capote's social circle about an ignorant out-of-towner who, upon being asked which glamorous New York restaurant he would like to visit, answered, "Well, let's have breakfast at Tiffany's".

The world-renowned Tiffany & Co. store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street  opened its doors for business on October 21, 1940.  In the opening scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s movie, a New York City yellow cab drives down a quiet Fifth Avenue and drops Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) off near the corner of 57th Street. The formally dressed Golightly stares through her iconic sunglasses into the Tiffany & Co. window as she consumes her morning pastry and coffee.

Now you really can have breakfast at Tiffany's. Tiffany is proud to present The Blue Box Cafe, located on the 4th floor of our New York flagship store.
The redesigned fourth floor also houses Tiffany's new Home & Accessories collection, as well as a baby boutique. 

Richard Moore, the vice president creative director overseeing all things store and window design, told Vanity Fair that the café is “yet another reason to visit our new fourth floor, and we hope it will draw customers up to experience the artfully composed home of Tiffany’s new luxury home and accessories collection of elevated everyday objects.”

Prices are really high.  For breakfast, you can enjoy coffee and croissant for $29.
GrubStreet  wrote: It only took 56 years, but Tiffany & Co. finally realized it could exploit a certain movie scene involving its Fifth Avenue flagship store and food. If you’re claustrophobic, this might be your get-out-of-jail-free card. Tiffany did almost the whole café — walls, plates, banquettes, even salt shakers — in the trademarked robin’s-egg blue. Vogue the point was to give it “the feeling of being inside a Blue Box.” Tiffany seems to have forgotten the one thing Holly Golightly made clear is that nobody could ever put her inside a box.




M&M'S World, Times Square


M&M's World in Times Square is New York City's largest candy store.  This huge 25,000 square feet store is really one of a kind.  It is a three story store and has many types and colors of actual M&Ms and lots of M&M memorabilia. The  store   has clothes, candy by the pound, NY themed souvenirs, and just about any other M&M related thing you could want. The store is open every day from 9AM till 12AM.
Mars, the company that makes  not only M&M's but  Snickers, and Milky Way chocolate bars traces its   origin to the  beginning of the 20th century. The company is entirely owned by the Mars family. Mars family  was called the richest family in America by Fortune magazine in 1988.

The founder of the company Frank  C.  Mars  started the Mars Candy Factory in 1911 with Ethel V. Mars, his second wife, in Newark, New Jersey.   Frank’s   son, Forrest  pushed the company into chocolate bars—the Milky Way debuted in 1924, soon followed by Snickers.


 Since their introduction in 1941, M&M's have become an iconic American candy. M&M's is an abbreviation for the names of their creators, Forrest Mars   and Bruce Murrie.  Forrest was the son of the founder of Mars company and     Bruce   was the son of William Murrie, the president of Hershey’s from 1908 to 1947. The two men called their new company “Mars & Murrie.”  M&M for short.
In March of 1941, Mars was granted a patent for his manufacturing process of  the new product - a candy-coated  chocolates .

After production began in Newark, New Jersey, M&M cut a deal to sell the sweets exclusively to the US Armed Forces so soldiers could have sweets in their rations no matter where they were in the world.   The candy-coated chocolates were resistant to heat - the slogan was  "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand." Originally sold in cardboard tubes, M&M’s were covered with a brown, red, orange, yellow, green or violet coating.


In  1976  the red M&M disappeared.   This decision came as a result of public controversy surrounding a synthetic  red dye called FD&C Red No. 2, also known as amaranth. Amaranth was  the 20th century’s most widely used food coloring; by 1970 it was being used in $10 billion worth of products.

The dye   was linked to cancer in a 1971 Russian study. Mars removed the red candies from production and replaced them with orange M&M's, which were added to the traditional brown, green and yellow lineup of colors. According to M&M’s public relations department, “the red candies were pulled from the color mix...to avoid customer confusion.”


Ten years later,   in 1987, once the panic surrounding anything red had passed Mars reintroduced red M&M's, but kept orange in the bag. Forrest Mars retired in 1973, passing the business on to his children. Rumor has it the Mars heirs are forbidden from ever selling any portion of their ownership in the company. Mars now produces 400 million M&Ms each and every day.