In a window wonderland

A majestic, life-sized white elephant has just burst onto the dance floor of an Arabian nightclub wearing a silver sequined shawl, taffeta ribbons dangling from its tusks. Giant disco balls and confetti litter the floor. The beast’s entrance has clearly startled a mysteriously elegant woman dressed in brightly colored, sari-inspired clothes -- very This Season. Her friend peers from behind the arches of an ornately carved minaret, the backdrop of midnight blue starry sky a perfect counterpoint to her equally stunning attire.

Although it looks as if it might be an elaborate film set, the scene, dubbed “Comfort and Joy,” is played out within the holiday windows of Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills. And the price of a ticket is nothing more than a few minutes of time.

Still, when you think of holiday windows, the image conjured up is more likely to be of New York’s Fifth Avenue, complete with a crush of shoppers stopping to marvel at the intricate works of window art.

We, by contrast, are a city of malls and sunshine, more often than not on the run. Store windows are usually passed at about 30 mph. But this is one season of the year when it’s worth slowing down for windows designed to be spectacular enough to lure us from our cars -- and beautiful and detailed enough so that once we get there, we won’t regret having stopped.

A city of extremes, L.A. has two kinds of windows: lavish, big-budget affairs found in Beverly Hills, and the more offbeat but uniquely creative windows that smaller shops dream up. The windows reflect the dual nature of a city that’s both excessive and edgy, using all of its resources and tapping all of its creativity.

There are also two kinds of window watchers in this city: transplants from colder climes, nostalgic for the holiday cheer that only a well-dressed window can bring, and those who appreciate window design as art. Window dressing is an old creative form, one in which art and commerce intersect.

Store windows are, of course, there to get people into the shops, but as the king of window dressing, Simon Doonan of Barneys New York, says: “Christmas windows are also street theater.

“People in L.A. are now very sophisticated,” he says. “You can’t serve them up dumbed-down versions of holiday windows. They expect to see something punchy and fun, not just snowmen and reindeer.”

Doonan should know: The designer is well known for his celebrity-themed windows, having featured Margaret Thatcher, Tammy Faye Bakker, Dolly Parton and Madonna (three times).

He tries not to box himself into Christmas cliches in his famous Madison Avenue windows and, luckily, the Wilshire Boulevard branch of Barneys offers up a slice of his over-the-top camp in a Hollywood-inspired “Cher”-themed window this year. At the Manhattan store, Cher takes up five giant windows, each paying homage to a different incarnation of the icon, from the ‘60s to now. In Beverly Hills, Doonan says, “all of the majesty of Cher is squeezed into one window.”

2002 is Cher’s debut as a holiday window. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘We’ve never done Cher.’ What a horrible, glaring omission. She’s not just an icon. She’s more like a deity. Everybody loves Cher,” Doonan says. He believes people “have an emotional connection to her. Celebrities today can be so stingy. They never give us anything. But Cher is magnanimous. We’ve always known when she was having relationship problems, we’ve known about her coming to terms with the fact that her daughter is gay. Cher shares.”

It’s this sharing ethos that links the Cher window to the spirit of the holidays -- a satirical, if not obvious, connection. While the New York-based Doonan designed the Barneys windows, Philip Johnson constructed the L.A. window, which is a high-camp explosion of all things glitzy and glamorous and, of course, all things Cher.

There are two Adel Rootstein mannequins cast from original 1970s molds and dressed in Bob Mackie costumes created for Cher, including a spectacular red glitter gown with a matching showgirl-style feather headdress. Rootstein, a noted mannequin designer, revolutionized the look of mannequins in the ‘60s. She was the first to sculpt mannequins based on contemporary celebrities -- Twiggy, Patti Boyd and Diane Brill, among others. Although Rootstein died in 1992, her London company continues and her mannequins are still much sought after.

In the Beverly Hills shopping district on and around Wilshire, there are many sumptuous windows to admire: Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, of course, as well as the boutiques on Rodeo Drive with looks designed for the area’s high-end shoppers. The windows at Saks are less over-the-top opulent than Neiman’s “Arabian Nights” theme next door, but they still have the luxurious and expensive presentation that the upscale neighborhood demands -- albeit with slightly more traditional holiday images.

There’s a twirling ballerina in one window a la “The Nutcracker,” a rocking horse in another. The theme is “White Palace,” designed to evoke a Russian imperialist feel, according to a Saks publicist. The windows do look cold, with an eerie greenish-gray hue, resembling something darker than the romantic chill of a Russian winter’s day. The smaller windows on the store’s Bedford Avenue side offer a more cheerful winter scene: big white snowflakes decorated by children who came to the store for a decorating party.

Agent Provocateur, the Melrose Avenue lingerie store, has always had a reputation for its attention-grabbing windows. Sexy with a sense of humor, one of the holiday windows this year features a lingerie-clad Rootstein mannequin driving a pink glitter sleigh; the other has two scantily dressed mannequins pulling the sleigh. The mannequins are modeled on Brill, the infamous 1980s nightclub diva.

Store manager Alison Hay is responsible for the design of the racy, tongue-in-cheek windows. This year she had help from L.A.-based artist and former Hollywood set decorator Steven Sutphen. Of her slightly risque display, she says, “I thought about having miniature huskies pulling the sleigh, but mannequins seemed much more interesting. Steven built the sleigh and painted it using a technique of mixing glitter with paint and then applying several coats of varnish, so it looks like glass.”

Hay says the Melrose windows need to make a bold statement because of the car culture, and she notes that unlike in Agent Provocateur’s London shops, where the business originated, a particular piece of lingerie placed in the window doesn’t draw customers inside -- but the overall effect of the windows does. “The windows convey the idea behind the company -- it’s gently naughty with a wry sense of humor.”

The Agent Provocateur windows change monthly and have developed a following. “You can stand in the store and see people driving by craning their necks or stopping dead in their tracks to have a look. That’s my reward,” Hay says. You don’t have to stand outside the store for long to witness exactly that.

“We’re not an enormous company and we don’t have thousands of dollars, but I think that’s better,” she says. “With a smaller budget, you have to be more creative.”

Then there’s the holiday window with a message. Irene Muzzy has been the heart and soul behind this kind of display at Uncle Jer’s Homestore in Silver Lake for more than a decade. She’s a one-woman window dressing team whose credo is always “ethnic but funky and never traditional.” Past windows have included “Turkish Disco Christmas” -- Ali Baba with Turkish rugs and disco balls; “Icelandic Houdini Christmas” -- for which a mannequin of Houdini was trapped beneath ice in chains; and “East Indian Christmas,” with an East Indian princess and child replacing the traditional mother and child figures. This year, it might have been a Frida Kahlo Christmas or a Burka Christmas, but Punjabi Christmas won out in the end.

As Muzzy explains, “It’s centered around Ganesh, the first among all Hindu gods. We wanted to go with a world peace theme, given the times we’re in, but Ganesh is appropriate since he represents transformation in Hindu mythology and is the remover of obstacles and bringer of good fortune.”

At the center of her colorful window display is a shrine to Ganesh, complete with a papier-mache elephant’s head, as well as plenty of peacock feathers, which in India represent the third eye -- and, of course, the ubiquitous holiday window disco ball. “Ours is a sort of disco Punjabi because I think of the ‘70s as a good time for release, to dance and party, and that’s kind of needed now.”

There are lots of pinks and greens, and the clothing chosen from the shop has Indian influences -- saris, Indian prints, flowing fabrics. In many ways, Uncle Jer’s is a miniature, lower-budget version of the Neiman Marcus windows. Not as grand but just as satisfying in a funkier, if not as awe-inspiring, way.

Meanwhile, Wasteland, the Melrose Avenue emporium of both high- and low-end resale clothing, always has edgy windows and is a great example of window design on a budget. This year, Janay Rose Growden, who’s designed the San Francisco branch of the store for years, drove down from Oakland with her car stuffed full of mannequins and wooden ponies to create “A Carousel of Seasons.”

This is the first Los Angeles assignment for Growden, who designs windows primarily in San Francisco and the Berkeley area. Her only direction from Wasteland’s owners: “Make it like a party but not a traditional Christmas window.” She says she’s often inspired by songs, and this year it was Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” and the lyrics -- “And the seasons they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down.” Then, a prop resource came through at just the right time.

“One of my junk guys happened to have all of these horses, so I bedazzled them, painted them, gave them false eyelashes and jewels. I wanted them to have the illusion of moving but couldn’t motorize them because they were too heavy and it would have been too expensive, so I tilted them. I wanted it to be startling.

“The most frustrating thing about doing the carousel windows was thinking outside the square. The windows aren’t round and the horses aren’t moving, but in window world, you can make it what you want. It doesn’t have to be literal.”

Holiday windows allow an artist’s fantasies to run free inside a glass box. You just may have to stop the car to appreciate it.

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Stop and stare

A select list of holiday windows worth viewing. If your favorite window isn’t mentioned, please e-mail us at weekend@latimes.com. Reader suggestions will be featured in the next issue of Calendar Weekend.

Uncle Jer’s Homestore

4459 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

Wasteland

7428 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles

Agent Provocateur

7961 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles

Barneys

9570 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

Saks Fifth Avenue

9600 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

Neiman Marcus

9700 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

Out of the Closet

8224 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

Slave

1221 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice

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Holiday Specials

Las Posadas on Olvera Street

Annual Christmas Posadas commemorating the journey of the holy family to Bethlehem. For nine nights, a procession singing hymns and holiday songs winds its way through Olvera Street stopping at a different shop “seeking shelter”; on the last night, Christmas Eve, the “pilgrims” celebrate the birth of Christ. The event has been celebrated on Olvera Street since the 1930s. El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, 125 Paseo de la Plaza, L.A. Starts Monday and continues until Dec. 24. 6:30 p.m. Free. (213) 628-1274.

Holiday Lamplight Tours

Tour of four historic homes each with a living history presentation representing the holiday season of a different era in Los Angeles history. Following the tour, visitors are invited to enjoy refreshments. Reservations required. Heritage Square Museum, 3800 Homer St., L.A. Saturday-Sunday, 8 p.m.; ends Sunday. $20. (626) 796-2898, Ext 224.

Victorian Christmas House Tours

Forty-five-minute tours through five festively decorated historic homes. Heritage Square, 715 S. A St., downtown Oxnard. Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $10, includes refreshments. (805) 483-7960.

Christmas Open House

Tour an 1844 adobe decorated in the Victorian-era style, plus crafts, a pinata, Santa Claus, live entertainment and refreshments. No reservations required. Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site, 4600 Virginia Road, Long Beach. Sunday, 1-4 p.m. Free. (562) 570-1755.

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Holiday Lights

Holiday Stained Glass

The story of Christmas is recounted in a rare display of turn-of-the-century stained-glass windows made in Germany in 1903. Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Museum, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale. Daily through Jan. 5, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. (800) 204-3131, Ext. 4781.

Edgemar Christmas Tree

Artist Anthony Schmitt’s Christmas tree constructed entirely of shopping carts is on display in the outdoor courtyard of the Frank Gehry-designed center through holiday season. Edgemar Shopping Center, 2435 Main St., Santa Monica. Daily through Jan. 1, 6:30 a.m.-midnight. Free. (310) 313-5166.

Griffith Park Light Festival

The annual mile-long holiday lights display depicting various seasonal messages can be viewed by car or on foot. Griffith Park, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, L.A. Daily through Dec. 26, 5-10:30 p.m. (888) 527-2757.

2002 Mission Inn Festival of Lights

More than 2 million bulbs decorate the historic landmark hotel for the holidays. Mission Inn, 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside. Ends Jan. 10. Free. (909) 784-0300.

Lighting of the Bay

Ninth annual lighting of electric “trees” on the waters of the Back Bay of Newport Beach. Ends Jan. 1. Newport Dunes Resort, 1131 Back Bay Drive, Newport Beach. Free. (949) 729-3863.

Drive-Thru Live Nativity Scene

Car passengers can view actors in costume and animals reenacting the nativity scene. Community Christian Church of the Foothills, 10193 Tujunga Canyon Blvd., Tujunga. Friday-Saturday, 7-9 p.m. Free. (818) 353-8080.

Boat Parade of Lights

The l holiday parade will also feature carolers, music, contests and other attractions. Dana Point Harbor, Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point. Friday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Free. (949) 492-5308.

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Ice & Snow

Downtown on Ice

Outdoor ice skating rink with holiday-themed concerts and refreshments. Pershing Square Park, 532 S. Olive St., L.A.

Info: (888) 527-2757.

Century City on Ice

Adults and children can enjoy skating plus holiday entertainment, rink-side dining, private skating lessons and evening ice shows throughout the season. Century Plaza Hotel and Tower, 2025 Avenue of the Stars, Century City.

Info: (800) 975-1885.

Beverly Hills Skating

Outdoor ice skating rink open to the public. Lessons are available and reservations are not necessary. Charges include skate rentals. Beverly Hills Civic Center Plaza, 450 N. Rexford Drive, Beverly Hills.

Info: (310) 285-2450.

Slip-sliding at Universal

Universal CityWalk Ice Skating Rink is open for the holiday season. Free holiday film classics on a big outdoor screen are scheduled Saturdays at 2 p.m. through Dec. 21. Plus live entertainment and snowfalls are planned weekends 5-10 p.m. through Dec. 22. Universal CityWalk, 1000 Universal Center Drive, Universal City.

Info: (818) 622-4455.

Twinkle Town

Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre has been transformed into a winter wonderland with ice skating, carnival rides, carolers, light displays, real snow and other attractions. Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine.

Info: (949) 855-8095.