Glass, Class : Winter Windows Help Make the Holidays a Special Season, and Not Just for Shoppers

Even on a balmy December night, passers-by who peer into the arched window of The White Rabbit gift shop in San Clemente can feel a shiver.

There, amid snowdrifts and sparkling white woodland animals, stands a glistening snow queen in a filmy white gown dripping with pearly beads. Behind her, a silk screen forest of white trees twinkles with mini-lights.

“The window has an ethereal feeling,” says Jamie Lewis, owner of The White Rabbit. Two years ago, Lewis entered her snow queen window in a contest of commercial and residential holiday displays sponsored by the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce and took the sweepstakes award.

“People stop by just to tell me what a wonderful window it is. It’s enchanting for children. They believe the animals are real.”

‘Tis the season for those artistic spirits who decorate store windows to really shine.

Like real-life Jack Frosts, they can create a sparkling winter wonderland even as the warm Santa Ana winds whip through sunny Southern California. They know shoppers expect and want imitation icicles, snow, frosted windows and all the other trappings of a Norman Rockwell Christmas.

While setting up a winter window for The Forgotten Woman at Fashion Island’s Atrium Court in Newport Beach, free-lance display artist Suzanne Weber began looking like one of her glitter-covered mannequins.

“People think this is fun,” says Weber, shaking the silver specks out of her brown hair as she toyed with a mannequin’s lavish headdress. “It’s fun, but it’s also back-breaking work, and you get filthy.”

Through her business, Suzu Designs, Weber creates windows for shops throughout Orange County, including Fogal Merletto and Kiere at Newport Center Fashion Island and A Pea in the Pod at South Coast Plaza’s Crystal Court in Costa Mesa.

“The hardest part is coming up with new ideas for all of the stores,” she says. “I try to do things original and different that tease the eye.”

At The Forgotten Woman, she made elaborate headdresses of iridescent ornaments, beads and glitter for mannequins to wear with black and silver gowns. For props, she wrapped long strands of faux pearl garland around the trunks of white Christmas trees and planted them in silver pots.

“It’s holiday without red and green,” she says.

At A Pea in the Pod, a maternity fashion store, she surrounded mannequins wearing black gowns with brown paper packages tied with straw and topped with pine cones and gold balls. A garland of gold twigs hung from the back wall, and papier-mache deer with antlers and faces sprayed with gold glitter rested on a bed of pine cones.

“I work with materials not normally considered artistic,” Weber says.

She hunts everywhere for props, including florist supply and art stores, used furniture and thrift shops. At a hardware store, she bought yards of window screen, which she scrunched and molded into a large, abstract sculpture. When illuminated with white lights, it served as a backdrop for mannequins.

“I experiment with different things,” she says. “Instead of an evergreen tree, I might use a glittered gold cone.”

For a summer window, she piled plastic fruit on the mannequin’s heads so they looked like a trio of Carmen Mirandas.

Necessity gives rise to innovative decorating trends. Display artists often work with a limited budget, so they have to improvise.

Lewis, for example, created her snow queen from an old mannequin donated by a local merchant. She painted the dummy’s face white and fashioned hair out of twisted newspaper. She made the gown from inexpensive fabric and beaded garland normally used on Christmas trees. She bent and twisted ornaments to make a tiara for the snow queen’s head.

Lewis did such an impressive job of transforming the dummy that “a lot of people think of her as an angel.”

The entire display cost under $500, and Lewis deliberately avoids using any of her own merchandise to set the scene. She sees the window as her gift to the community.

“Christmas needs to maintain that magic, special feeling,” she says. “Not everything has to be commercial.

“The whole window is just a fantasy scene for people to enjoy.”

Most of the time, however, a display artist’s first goal is to sell merchandise. With so many advertising messages competing for shoppers’ attention, they need special techniques to attract and hold the eye.

“You have to make a real statement, because the customer only has a few seconds to register what you’re selling,” says Shirley Meusch, owner of Havoc, a new and used clothing shop in Laguna Beach.

Before opening her shop six years ago, Meusch worked as a display manager for Nordstrom in the Brea Mall for nine years and at Broadway for five years.

“The window can’t be a little of everything,” she says.

Display artists must be careful not to distract the eye with too much clutter.

“Sometimes it’s good to use the same style of shoe on all the mannequins, or have them all wear gold jewelry. If you put a real interesting belt on one, the next mannequin might need a necklace and no belt.”

Her window at Havoc has been artfully arranged in symmetrical fashion. The display forms a one-sided pyramid, from a mannequin in a tapestry skirt and burgundy blazer down to a pair of round sunglasses at the pyramid’s point. A tapestry blazer on a T-shaped hanger, a pair of pants, a sweater and shoes all rest in horizontal or vertical positions. To put clothes at an angle confuses the eye, Meusch says.

“The eye looks from left to right or up and down.”

Lighting can also pull the eye toward an important piece of merchandise.

Ideally, a well-done window will draw people into the shop. Yet display artists know that no matter how great their creation, it won’t linger long.

“Display is a temporary art,” Meusch says. “It’s torn down and can never be used again.”