Display Design Fashion in London 2016 2017

London's department stores treat their windows as a kind of public theatre. The big three luxury stores, Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges, are already an institution when it comes to window and store design. During London Fashion Week, visual merchandisers pull out all the stops, with everything from neon colours to flora and fauna and tinsel to mirror effects. In the mid-2010s, one strong current was a turn toward nature. Stores showed everything from multi-storey planted green walls to paper flowers on the ceiling. Harrods leaned into British culture and humour. In 2016, it tied its windows to the Chelsea Flower Show, where it had a show garden, with florally styled windows to match. It also used the theme "Whatever the weather," a wink at Britain's gloomy climate and its dry sense of humour. The centenary of British Vogue was also everywhere in the city's visual merchandising. Harvey Nichols, meanwhile, followed the nature trend by putting wood at the centre of its Knightsbridge windows, as abstracted forms winding around the mannequins or as organic structures forming the backdrop. Selfridges and Liberty pushed in different directions, one toward ideas and the other toward pattern. Selfridges' "Bright New Things" project, now in its fifth edition, focused on sustainable fashion in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and gave design talents ten weeks of Oxford Street window space. That is a busy street, since the windows are seen by 110,000 passers-by a day. Liberty stayed true to its print heritage, with its floral patterns mixed riotously and used as wallpaper on the back walls and floors. It also staged a "Maximal" scheme of eclectic layering, riotous colour and deliberately clashing prints.