STYLE : FASHION : Window Dressing

Now you see it; now you see something else. With only seconds to hook the customers streaming past their storefronts, savvy retailers take great pains to create window displays that shift the buying impulse into full gear.

“I don’t advertise, so literally everyone who comes in here is enticed by the store’s windows and exterior,” says native Oklahoman Janet Dabner-Atlas, owner of Atlas Clothing Co., a new store in Los Angeles that specializes in what she calls “updated ‘Grapes of Wrath’ ” clothes. “There’s a lot of competition for attention in this area, so I opted for simplicity and something that tugs at the heartstrings--kind of ‘20s Tulsa as opposed to high-tech and intimidating.”

Susan Lieberman of Paris 1900, a Santa Monica store that stocks vintage bridal gowns and trousseaus, feels the same way: “Because the exterior is so unique and noticeable, I feel a huge responsibility to make my window displays extraordinary, too.”

The importance of artfully decorated windows isn’t lost on department stores either. Along Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Robinson’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and I. Magnin do their best to sell as well as entertain. “A window display that doesn’t provoke is not successful,” says Guy Scarangello of I. Magnin. “Windows are a form of street theater that work in tandem with what’s going on in the store. They very often can be the first signal of a change in the store’s merchandising, image and advertising concepts.”

Honk if you love clothes. Pull over if you want to shop.