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/ --- Looking at the Tiffany store windows gives one hope that visual merchandising is alive and well.

Because although Gene Moore, the window dresser who is well known for his innovative and inventive displays for the fine jewelry company had been gone for sometime, his spirit lives on in the store windows of Tiffany.

The treatment was traditional with red, blue and green, yet the execution is par excellence, a creative effort that truly highlights the brand.

Even Gucci went for a semi-traditional trim with a minor change. Instead of the conventional Christmas red and green, Gucci used their corporate colors, which are also red and green, but different shades.

Hence, like Tiffany, the brand was highlighted. And like Tiffany, the ‘cookie cutter, clinically clean look’ was thrown out the window (pun intended).

Victoria’s Secret changed too! After years of seeing the Victoria’s Secret Angels, they are now using mannequins, part of the ‘exhibit’ that the company is holding in all their stores about their history.

And as a tribute to Tyra Banks who recently announced her retirement from the catwalk during the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, her bigger than life photo, without the wings is being displayed.

Newcomer Zara, the Spanish retail giant and competitor of H&M for trendy, fashionable clothes that are affordable stepped up to the plate creating a modern ‘Christmas’ at home store window.

Hopefully, these silver linings among the cloud of ‘cookie cutter’ store windows will prevail. For almost a decade now, customers had been greeted with minimalist windows that were actually good in the beginning.

But once the store windows became just another outlet for an ad campaign, then the minimalist treatment started to look like they lack of creativity, or worse, the death of the art of visual merchandising.

Visual merchandising has a hundred year story here in the U.S., starting way back the early 1900s. Let us not lose that century of creative work simply because it is just ‘faster and easier’ to be repetitious.

Maybe, we should bring back the good-natured competitive spirit of the 'Admen' and the 'Displaymen.' Then, visual merchandising will cease to be a function of advertising, but rather a department of its own.

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Gucci

Gucci

BCBG Max Azria

Sephora

Tiffany

Tiffany

Banana Republic

Victoria's Secret

Zara