New York City department stores have long drawn visitors simply to marvel at their inviting window displays. Whether at Christmas time or all throughout the year, lively merchandising displays have long been a feature of New York fashion retailing.
Under Stutz’s tenure, Henri Bendel hired a number of visual display directors who helped raise the store’s profile on the street. Latterly, most renowned was Joel Schumacher, who would become a Hollywood film director, and served two separate stints as Bendel’s display director in the 1960s and 1970s. Following Schumacher’s final departure, Robert Currie took over the windows in 1973, with great success. Currie is credited with pioneering street theatre in window display, creating tableaus with vivid social commentary.[1] Famous and shocking windows by Currie included housewives in lingerie, couture clothing surrounded by garbage, and a boudoir murder scene. Currie’s dramatic style was similarly carried on by his assistant and successor Robert Rufino, who took over the role of visual display director until 1982.
In an interview with The Village Voice in April of 1976, Currie laid out eleven tenets of his display philosophy:
1) Read all periodicals.
2) Climb into the windows when creating them.
3) Do not interpret a window.
4) See everything in life as an object rather than what it means.
5) Do not think of windows as anything other than entertainment
6) Never tell the whole story of any window.
7) Find the thin line where the background of the window and the objects displayed do not overpower each other.
8) The point of the windows is to mix things which normally do not go together.
9) The placement of the object in a window is what makes the object and the window interesting.
10) Treat each window as a weekly art project.
11) There is no fashion in magazines anymore. Store windows must do all the work. [2]
The windows at Bendel’s were unique in several ways. Unlike other stores, the long unbroken glass windows that flanked the entrance at 10 West 57th opened directly onto the store, rather than being enclosed spaces boxed off from the interior. Changed weekly, a visit to the Bendel’s windows was an outing for many New Yorkers, who would watch them go up live every Thursday night. Former store buyer Joan Kaner described the windows at Bendel’s throughout the 1970s as a happening: “You know they talk about Bergdorf’s windows, and they’re good, but they were nothing was like Bendel’s. There was a romance and a drama. Every window told a story, and it was an exciting story. It wasn’t offbeat, but it was outré, it was exceptional. And people would ooo and ahhh and just come by to take a look.”[3]
The images in this collection were generously provided by Robert Rufino.
[1] Women’s Wear Daily, “Robert Currie, Dead at 45”, July 6, 1993.
[2] The Village Voice, “That Night at Bendel’s: The Men Who Make the Windows Work,” April 19, 1976.
[3] Joan Kaner, interview by Lauren Sagadore and Hazel Clark, August 4th, 2014, transcript.