Selfridges has unveiled its Christmas theme, ‘A Christmas For Modern
Times’, to make it the first luxury department store in the world to
present its in-store displays and windows for the holiday season, across
all of its stores in London, Birmingham, and Manchester.
For 2019, Selfridges is sharing its futuristic vision of Christmas with
a “future fantasy” theme that rethinks traditional, beloved festive stories
and re-tells well-known fairytales through a “modern lens” in what it calls
a display for the “next generation Christmas, an interplay of old and
new”.
Each window at its Oxford Street, London store is either an symbolic
representation of a well-known fairytale, such as Cinderella, Jack and the
Beanstalk, Goldilocks and Rapunzel, or features one particular iconic
element from one of them, showcasing a “futuristic aesthetic treatment and
a softer magical narrative”.
Selfridges London’s biggest triple-sided window at the corner of Oxford
Street and Orchard Street features a magical shipwrecked feast amongst the
waves, with giant magical moon and moving boat and oars, reimagining the
boat scene from The Owl and The Pussycat.
Other key windows include a magic translucent wardrobe, featuring
everything princess would want to wear, set in a snow mound with ice and
futuristic trees, while a magic mirror scene showcases interactive content
of models walking through a future fantasy landscape, bringing the latest
looks to life digitally, and a window dedicated to Cinderella features an
impossibly large and dramatic gown by Christian Siriano spilling out of the
translucent arches of the palace ballroom.
There is also a window created in collaboration with Simone Rocha,
featuring Rapunzel’s tower, made out of an icy structure, with hair strands
made of aluminium. and specially created giant pearl Rocha hair slides for
Rapunzel’s hair, weaved through the arches of the tower, while the forest
creatures scene delves into future fantasy fashion with bespoke jackets by
Nicole Benisti.
Selfridges iconic Christmas windows features collaborations with Simone
Rocha and Christian Siriano
The overarching colour palette of the windows and in-store displays
explore silver, white, blue and green along with mirror, crystal and
transparency, and features more than 85,000 Christmas baubles, with many
reused from existing displays, explained Selfridges, as well as over 15,000
metres of LED lights decorate the dense spruce foliage and handrails inside
and outside the London store.
Inside the London department store, a 13 metre high mirrored Christmas
tree hangs in the central atrium, which will come alive through a “dazzling
lighting show” projected on its surface, and even Santa Claus has had a
makeover, his red suit is gone and replaced with a metallic silver one.
At the London store alone, it has taken a multi-specialist team of 100
people more than 500 hours to produce, working non-stop rotated shifts for
the past 10 days. In total, across all Selfridges stores and online it has
needed a 500 strong team.
Christmas at Selfridges
- Over 85,000 Christmas baubles, with many reused
from existing displays (hung across the stores’ balconies and ceilings) - Snow globes across all stores each contain over 40 kilograms of
biodegradable confetti - 13,000 paper decorations hung across the stores’ ceilings
- A giant 1.5 tonne, 13 metre high mirrored Christmas tree hangs in the
Oxford street store’s central atrium - Over 100 metres electric cabling was used to install the handrail
atrium decoration framing the giant Christmas tree - 5 kilometres of handrail garland installed around the store
- Over 100 bespoke mirrored Christmas trees in London alone
- Over 15,000 metres of LED lights decorate the dense spruce foliage and
handrails inside and outside the London store
Images: courtesy of Selfridges
