Fashion Window: A Conceptual Analysis Of Department Store Holiday Windows

Window displays in the fashion industry are unique sites of meaning that combine advertising and artwork in a three-dimensional space. The current body of research surrounding window displays approaches the subject from a marketer’s position and attempts to evaluate performance. This project shifts the focus to the artistic qualities of window displays as they are used by fashion retailers. The primary theoretical lens is gestalt theory, which has applications in both psychology and design. The specific windows examined are the Christmas windows at retailer Saks Fifth Avenue Toronto in December of 2018. An autoethnographic research design is employed, resulting in an exploratory empirical analysis that serves as an entry into an under-represented area of study: the fashion window as an art object. The key findings of the project are the application of gestalt theory to the design of the windows and the researcher’s observations to suggest an explanation of the public’s response to the displays.

Fashion Window: A Conceptual Analysis Of Department Store Holiday Windows

Window displays in the fashion industry are unique sites of meaning that combine advertising and artwork in a three-dimensional space. The current body of research surrounding window displays approaches the subject from a marketer’s position and attempts to evaluate performance. This project shifts the focus to the artistic qualities of window displays as they are used by fashion retailers. The primary theoretical lens is gestalt theory, which has applications in both psychology and design. The specific windows examined are the Christmas windows at retailer Saks Fifth Avenue Toronto in December of 2018. An autoethnographic research design is employed, resulting in an exploratory empirical analysis that serves as an entry into an under-represented area of study: the fashion window as an art object. The key findings of the project are the application of gestalt theory to the design of the windows and the researcher’s observations to suggest an explanation of the public’s response to the displays.

Modelling changes over time in a multivariate paired comparison: An application to window display design

This article proposes an alternative method of making comparative judgements in multivariate paired comparisons (PCs) where judgements about change are made directly by comparing an object at two time points for each of a series of attributes. The application deals with the design of shop window displays where products should be arranged by teams of vocational students according to aesthetic principles (attributes). The photos of the students’ window displays at time 1 (before feedback) and at time 2 (after feedback) were compared by judging each attribute as to whether it was fulfilled better at time 1 or at time 2. An advantage of this PC approach over an alternative of a scoring system is the possibility to assess even subtle changes of various aspects of attractiveness, which cannot easily be measured using a score. To analyse these data, we used earlier work which developed both a multivariate PC pattern model for multi-attribute data and a PC model over time and defined a multivariate PC model of changes (MPCC). The model can be fitted as a non-standard Poisson log-linear model and provides estimates of change for the three attributes for time 2 and we were able to check for possible interaction effects between these attributes.