Location: Dallas, TX THE GALLERIA DALLAS 13350 Dallas Parkway Dallas, Texas 75240 Tel: 972-458-2800 Fax: 972-702-7130 Website: www.galleriadallas.com

Store Hours Monday-Saturday: 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM Sunday: 12:00 AM - 6:00 PM

DALLAS, Dec 18, 2005/ FW/ --- To say that this year’s crop of store windows at the Galleria Dallas is unattractive will be wrong though. They catch your eyes, but do not hold your interest.

You pass them by and sometimes, you don’t even notice. In short, the main purpose of the store window, ‘to catch the interest of a passerby and invite them in’ was defeated.

Maybe it’s because Americans in general are bombarded by advertising 24 hours a day, seven days a week on all forms of media. And that’s the reason why when we see a bigger than life photo of an ad campaign in a store window, it does not even register anymore.

A good example is Abercrombie & Fitch, a national retailer that seemed to have ‘skipped’ Christmas this year. Instead of jolly old Santa, A&F is announcing to the world that the new face of the brand is Matt Ratcliff, displaying bigger than life photos of the model in their store windows.

To be fair, Matt Ratcliff is good looking, yet during the holiday season, Santa Claus’ kindly face gives more impact than a good looking hunk showing off his abs, proving that he works out.

Sad to say, Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, well known for their inventive store windows in New York fell into the same trap of ‘cookie cutter’ store window this season. You just can’t help asking, what happened?

Do all the good visual merchandisers or window dressers reside only in New York? Is there no one in Dallas at all?

Because the store windows shown at both Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue here in Dallas were generated by the advertising department, NOT the Visual Merchandising department!

Have the ‘Admen’ of the early 1900s won over the ‘Displaymen’ of that era? There is ‘Madison Avenue,’ the hub of the advertising universe. But, except for New York’s Fifth Avenue dubbed as the ‘Miracle Mile’ of store windows, there is really no hub of the visual merchandising universe at all!

So, seeing the Louis Vuitton window after a few minutes walking away from Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue was truly uplifting.

Two ‘original’ store windows displaying accessories in the center of star-studded vortices is a reminder that visual merchandising is not dead yet; that there are still people out there who are creative and can do a proper store window without the ‘cookie cutter’ feel.

The Louis Vuitton store window is a great example of brand spiraling without falling into the pitfall of being repetitious. In short, it was a perfect convergence of visual merchandising and advertising.

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