Simon Doonan: Revolutionizing Barneys New York Holiday Window Displays With Satire and Style [PHOTOS]

“Department store holiday window displays, especially during Christmas, play a significant role in encouraging consumers to spend more. These displays are perhaps the most anticipated marketing opportunity of the year, with their reveals perfectly timed in mid-November to kick off the holiday season they add to the sparkle and shine of the season.

WWD has covered decades of innovation in visual display since the early 1900s. From London’s Harrods and Selfridges to Paris’ Printemps Haussmann and Galleries Lafayette to New York City landmark flagship department stores; Macy’s Herald Square, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman. And now-defunct stores like Lord & Taylor, Henri Bendel’s and Barney’s, where creative director Simon Doonan had one task: to make Barney’s windows a must-see destination worldwide, during his two-decade tenure as vice president and creative director. Doonan succeeded, changing the sparkle and shine of the season into a quirky yet poignant satire on the social meter of the day.

WWD made note of his ascension at Barneys New York, one of the city’s luxury shopping destinations from 1985 to the stores closing in 2019. Dubbing him the “diminutive doyenne of display” for his contemporary approach to the art of visual display. And while the monthly display was eye-catching, it was his holiday windows that attracted crowds at Barneys’ Seventh Avenue and Madison Avenue locations.

In 1989, Doonan collaborated with illustrator Ruben Toledo for his astrology-themed windows. He took it up a notch in 1990 with life-size caricatures of Madonna, Prince and Tammy Faye Bakker in repose. In 1992, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Elizabeth and Cher-ing window, “since the holidays are all about sharing” he told WWD, captured the holiday spirit. Doonan’s satirical exploration of Nouvelle Society as noted in WWD, was one that only Doonan and his collaborators could conjure up. Towards the end of the decade and the beginning of the 2000s, a global cast of fashion stars, tributes to the 1950s, 1960s, celebrity chefs and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” were amongst his scandalous allusions of delight.

And while not all were met with welcomed applause, Doonan always welcomed the scrutiny continuing to push the boundaries year after year garnering more public attention along the way. Penning his tell-all memoir, aptly titled, “Confessions of a Window Dresser,” in 1998.

“The task was never easy, catering to an audience that never settled for standard clichés,” he told WWD in 2015. Describing his window dressing as unconventional, akin to his design process, calling it “an insanely democratic form of entertainment, where everyone and anyone had access.”