Henri Bendel

Theme: “Deco the Halls.”
The Jazz Age and Roaring ’20s, a huge theme in fashion for fall/winter (not to mention the imminent release of The Great Gatsby) influenced the team.

How: Gilberto Santana, Assistant VP of Visual, and his team worked with the Brooklyn Museum, which has thousands of old dress sketches. They chose several and recreated the looks for the windows. The team recreated the Bendel staircase in the window (and loaded it up with merchandise you can actually purchase inside, of course) and dressed the models in dresses copied from the original sketches, but fabricated with unusual materials like cupcake liners, licorice, and film strips. Hurricane Sandy caused some delays, and the original tree they decided to use never got delivered. An 11th hour replacement had to be made.

Fun facts: The cupcake liner dress is made out of 800 liners, and there’s a flapper dress made out of 12,000 black beans.