Wild Windows

The mannequins in department-store windows traditionally are posed in attitudes of stiff propriety. But a countertrend is under way at some fashionable stores, spurred by young window dressers who group their figures to enact little immobile dramas of sex, bizarre fantasy, even suicide--just about anything that will make a jaded passer-by stop and look. Explains Candy Pratts, 26-year-old window designer for Bloomingdale's in New York: "You've got to reach anybody who walks by and zap 'em."

At times the displays get risque. Example: a series of windows at Los Angeles' May Co. department stores designed by Artist Peter Shyne, supposedly to "illustrate the possibilities of a California vacation." One window showed a beach scene in which a mannequin looking like Telly Savalas triumphantly brandished a bikini top belonging to a female mannequin who had her back discreetly turned. Another window showed a man dressed only in brief shorts at a sink and a woman in panties and bra. The implication was that they had just climbed out of bed and were packing for an illicit trip together. A current window at New York's Henri Bendel even hints at lesbianism. It shows a woman in a revealing nightgown in a passive, almost embarrassed stance; another woman in a longer gown leans over her shoulder in an aggressive posture.

Weird Display. Sex, however, is far from the only theme of the new theater of the bazaar. One Bendel window showed a woman gone mad, clawing at the walls. Another scene had several women staring at an apparent suicide surrounded by pill bottles. Occasionally everyday realism makes an appearance. One Candy Pratts kitchen scene for Bloomingdale's featured a real smashed raw egg on the floor, which had to be sponged up every night.

Whatever may be thought of them as art, the startling window displays fulfill their commercial function: they do prompt people not only to stop and look but come into the store and buy. A sequence of windows in a Manhattan boutique named San Francisco depicted the suicide of a lovesick heiress: the first window showed her talking on the telephone in the stateroom of her private yacht, surrounded by bottles of liquor and sleeping pills; later ones displayed newspaper headlines telling of her death. The heiress was wearing a silk blouse priced at $125; the store swiftly sold out its entire stock of the blouses.

Such success has inured window designers and their bosses to the inevitable complaints. Mary Avant, designer for Foley's department store in Houston, put together a weird display called "Black Magic": two male mannequins in black jockey shorts, four females in black evening wear. All the figures were spray-painted black and had limbs suspended apart from the torsos. "A little old lady came in and screamed, 'Oh, God, how horrifying!' " relates Avant. The store manager shrugged off the protest: two days later Foley's had no more of the garments to sell.

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