Introduction

1Throughout the twentieth century, the window displays of Parisian department stores frequently represented the city to promote the products on sale. In these carefully crafted mini-scenes, images of the city were accessories to commercial rhetoric. Views of neighbourhoods (the Boulevard Saint-Germain and its cafés) and famous buildings (the Sacré-Cœur, Eiffel Tower, American skyscrapers, etc.) provided a theatre for scenarios drawing on the international profile of major cities and the quality of their heritage. These representations took various forms: photos, large-format drawings, and objects made using the products themselves—American skyscrapers, for example, were often represented using piles of linen, with each fold representing a storey.

2Images of urban architectural heritage presented in an unusual setting reinforced a certain urban identity and, in tandem, the prestige of the brands presented. Images of the city, used alongside pieces of cardboard, strings, dummies, and other objects forming the display, generated an aesthetic and discursive dimension. Being visible from the street, these played an indirect part in the post-World War II wave of cultural democratisation in which there was a clear political drive to encourage access to monuments and to develop mass tourism. Images of the city thus displayed helped promote heritage based on economic and cultural objectives.

3This study shows how images of the city, taken up within urban space, conquered a new form of reception among the public. On being placed in window displays, monuments and districts become equivalent to museum objects. Images of the city recomposed behind a sheet of glass enhance the cultural value of the display, even if the reassembling, clipping, and cropping of elements transform them into parts of a larger whole. Displays thus act as an interface where the highbrow and the popular meet, but this cultural transfer cuts both ways: on the one hand, it enhances the tourism reputation of cities, but on the other, it modifies and distorts apprehension of the urban heritage, which becomes subservient to commercial purposes.

1. The city and architecture in window displays: a commercial strategy

1.1. Department stores’ use of tourism to drive sales

5The development of retail in cities such as Paris, especially its department stores whose clientele was composed of both Parisians and foreign travellers, inspired learned consideration on how to organise window displays. Whether presenting the latest seasonal accessories, fashion items, decorative objects, the traditional back to school kit, or sacrosanct Christmas toys, shop displays drew on local inspiration from the emblematic sites and monuments of the French capital. And indeed, Paris was the stuff of dreams. “What do people come to see in Paris? Museums and cultural places? Shows and rare entertainments? Monuments renowned for their prestige and singularity? For the past hundred years, the Louvre, the Folies-Bergère, and the Eiffel Tower have encapsulated these three major categories, which are perpetually added to and reclassified” (Agulhon, 1984, 1997, p. 4589). Window-dressing teams were aware of the power of attraction exerted by these emblematic places, and of the message they could convey when used in shop windows.

6Admired for a fleeting instant, glimpsed through the flow of pedestrians, shop windows need to immediately catch the eye. To do this they have to present elements that are readily identifiable by a broad public, evocative motifs connecting with passers-by’s aspirations. Famous monuments fulfil this objective as immediately identifiable representatives of a city’s image: “most of the time it is by drawing on powerful elements in their heritage that cities […] endeavour to define an original personality, a style, ‘a simple identity that is immediately comprehensible for a vast public’” (Cazes & Portier, 1998, p. 17). This method is necessary not only for cities wishing to boost their tourist economy, but also for department stores which enlist iconic images of the city to make their displays more attractive. For this reason, images of Paris’s famous monuments and neighbourhoods are widely used for a commercial-cultural rhetoric enriching both commerce and the city. For tourists, many of whom visit Paris’s department stores, shop displays provide a potted version of this urban vision in which “Paris is perceived as a world capital for high society […], often concealing the reality of life there in favour of a representation of a world all foreigners dream of entering” (Vajda, 2015, p. 16).

1.2. The vision of a romantic Paris to make people dream

7The task of the window-dresser confronting this challenge is to make passers-by dream. “Window-dressers embellish the world—or stores at least—to make it easier for people to enter them” (Hotakainen, 2009, 2011, p. 34). As fine observers of daily life, the team working with Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe after the war referred to the “reciprocal interplay between display and street” (Couvreur, 1952, p. 68). There is much to say about the dialectic a display maintains with its immediate environment. If the barrier of the sheet of glass prevents any intrusion into the display itself, a string of subterfuges gives spectators the feeling that the boundary between store and street is a porous one (Monin, Simonnot, 2015, p. 105-118). Marc Perelman gauges this frustration well: “in the street, the body is sometimes inside and sometimes outside, sometimes inside the outside in covered passageways, at other times outside the inside when, for instance, we gaze through the pane at a department store’s display of inaccessible objects” (Perelman, 2015, p. 119).

1.3. Topicality and celebrations

9Certain window-dressers chose to turn their back on this idyllic vision of the city, and instead rooted their display in topicality. This was the world of speed and transport, of the possibilities offered by technical and industrial progress, asserting a confident image of modernity as a factor of social progress. Thus the media coverage of the alienating city in Métropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) was reinterpreted in a display of men’s fashion in which the crowded roads and soaring buildings evoked the work and life of a senior manager whose wife was waiting at home to welcome him back at the end of the day. The first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York (Charles Lindbergh, 1927) was celebrated one year later in a display showing an aerodrome with the Eiffel Tower in the background, mirrored by another display in which the same aircraft had landed next to skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. Here, the representation of monuments symbolising the celebration of an event widely reported in the press was used to promote the store’s toy department.

11Lastly, it will be noted that cinematographic tributes were also used, often with a nod to certain popular films. The view from the roof of the Paris Opera, which had been used before the war as a setting for a wedding scene (Bon Marché, Le couple idéal, undated), was taken up again some eighty years later by the photographer Bettina Rheims in a tribute to La Grande Vadrouille (Gérard Oury, 1966). Between these two displays, this popular film had left traces in the collective memory, with Rheims’ representation of the Opera including a parachutist who had unfortunately landed on the roof of the monument (Printemps, 2011).

12Due to their topicality, be it comical or extraordinary, and to tributes borrowing from a broad range of artistic references, monuments and images of cities have long been prized as window display elements.

2. The art of working with images of the city

2.1. What do monuments add to a composition?

13With just a few exceptions, representations of architecture and the city in displays fall into two types: either a background decor (a drawing or photograph), or else the products on sale are assembled in a such a way as to represent buildings. The use of large-format photos became widespread after 1945. While Henri Glévéo spoke in 1922 of “backgrounds enabling window-dressers to complete a genre scene” (Glévéo, 1922, p. 39), post-war manuals regularly referred to photographic enlargements. For Robert Véno, “photographic enlargements are widely used in window-dressing. Whether representing an atmosphere or ambiance, or more modestly documentary in nature, the enlargement is generally stuck on a plyboard background, and then cut out in the case of silhouettes. A photographic enlargement may be used to replace a painted canvas background when it is a matter of representing a landscape, such as a park” (Véno, 1955, p. 132). In an extensively documented book, Lila Marabini and Valentine Gisors Isabey make the same observation, incidentally pointing out that photos had not completely replaced other forms of representation, “the use of photographs and drawings has increased a lot over recent years, and the choice has often been fortunate” (Marabini, Gisors Isabey, 1967, p. 31). The use of photographs as display backdrops, in addition to providing context siting an installation within a credible scene (a town, landscape, interior, etc.), served primarily to create a dark backdrop to contrast with products placed in the foreground. Many photographs, almost exclusively in black and white, were deliberately darkened or taken at night to heighten the contrast. Whatever the products on display, buildings lent themselves well to this type of opposition. Dummies in the foreground were placed in front of views of Paris illuminated by night: a fountain on the Place de la Concorde, the Pont-Neuf, and Notre-Dame (Galeries Lafayette, Mode femme, 1965). Barbie dolls staged in front of the Opéra Garnier enabled the foreground to be lit, standing out against the dark silhouette of the monument, thus heightening the theatricality (Galeries Lafayette, Noël, 1966). The use of nocturnal ambiances also tied in with the idea of Paris by night as a city that never sleeps, emphasising the aesthetic quality of the artificially lit monuments.

14The second way of introducing architecture into displays is more original, for the products themselves reproduce and mimic buildings. Before the war, enormous piles of linen were often used to represent skyscrapers in spectacular stagings, sometimes taking up the entire display and even spilling into the interior of the store (Bon Marché, you 1933). It must be said that skyscrapers, in addition to transporting the public to American cities with their surprising architectural forms, provided a useful vertical line for composing the display. An article on shopfitting in La revue du Jouet (Anonyme, 1955, p. 29) presents a typical composition in which a block of skyscrapers contextualises the scene:

16Lastly, architecture sometimes left the display to take over the storefront ground floor—discreetly at first, with sculptures and porticoes figuring on side walls (Galeries Lafayette, 1953), then more elaborately, when a display was enhanced by a Renaissance architectural frame forming a relief on the façade.

2.2. Architecture to promote travel and exoticism

17In the early twentieth century, American window-dressers were already interested in using architecture in their displays: “There seems a tendency of late toward the use of architectural decoration in show windows. This is especially true in the large Chicago stores. Marshall Field and Co. use very elaborate examples of this class of design. Carson, Pirie, Scott and Co. also feature it, while Mandel Brothers and Chas. A Stevens use it a great deal. This class of background is especially suited for the showing of garments, furs and clothing, but hardly for blankets, underwear, etc.” (Cowan, 1912, p. 196). The idea that architecture was reserved for presenting certain categories of products was then dropped, since the examples cited show that it was used widely. The Ici Galeries, à vous New York display at the Galeries Lafayette in 1956 deployed considerable means to depict the architecture of an American city: solarised photos of skyscrapers creating vertical lines to present men’s clothing, plyboard models of skyscrapers for the collection of women’s dressing gowns, and the gentler depiction of a port district for the window of children’s clothing. There were also the traditional fabrics, draped in great vertical lines, and whose chequered pattern suggested the windows of buildings.

18Although department store’s interest in foreign productions was dominated by the United States, a recurrent fascination in pre-war window displays, it is forgotten that they also took inspiration from other cultures. Italian architecture was frequently used to promote travel or to present products in thematic displays, with loggias, Renaissance palaces, and above all Venice, in the form of the Doge’s palace and jetties with gondolas (Galeries Lafayette, Mode, 1958; Bon Marché, Étrennes, 1969). The taste for summer ambiances also drew on the architecture of Greek islands (Galeries Lafayette, Mode, 1958; Bon Marché, Bains de mer, 1969), with the contrasting light and shade on whitewashed geometric facades providing the dynamic lines of composition required for background scenes. Distant exoticism became more prevalent in the 1980s, when references to Japanese or Moroccan domestic architecture once again provided the lines for composing a balanced window display (Galeries Layettes, Voyage, 1981).

19There have been many opposing observations about mastering ambiance, referred to by window-dressers as decor. According to the head window-dresser for the Corot fabric store, the key is to “use as few products as possible, and to give each article maximum impact. Equally, to create ambiance add a blurred decor, for the display decor must be an element and not the main factor, otherwise it would be detrimental to the products. In other words, one needs to know in exactly what ambiance to place them without according too much importance to the decor, which is merely a complement” (Anon., 1951, p. 26). A parallel may be established between this conception of window-dressing and contemporaneous debates about how to display museum collections by presenting a few selected pieces in voluntarily neutral decors, a trend which has since become dominant. The presence of decor to create an ambiance was far more assertive in store displays. It was often reduced to a simple form, immediately identifiable as the Eiffel Tower, which sufficed to symbolise both Paris and France. According to Henri Loyrette, it is because of its shape that it is so frequently used: “for the advantage of the monument and one of the reasons why it is so used in imagery is because it may be so easily summarised: two bulky lines, an arc, and a spire topped by a lantern, the whole crisscrossed by a grid of metallic trusses of varying density” (Loyrette, 1984, 1997, p. 4285). In window displays, the Eiffel Tower, like American skyscrapers, was used for its vertical shape, with its powerful, light, and dynamic lines procuring a central axis for the composition. For foreign tourists admiring the displays, this recognisable yet for them exotic shape symbolised travel and foreignness.

3. A heritage vision of the city

3.1. A substitute for a museum of architecture

21Many other parallels could be established between sales discourse and museum displays, especially their reciprocal influences. Still, whereas a museum celebrates history, shop windows serve primarily to promote products and the shop itself. As we have seen, the use of architecture and monuments is primarily a useful composition technique for organising a display. But it also indirectly helps convey an image of the city and its monuments, lending a display credibility by placing it in an existing context, despite extraordinary or poetic interpretations far removed from reality. The presence of a monument seeks to symbolise the image of a city or country via what all consider as architectural heritage. That is why the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, and the Sacré-Cœur have been represented so frequently. “As a flagbearer for the modernity of Paris and France” (Cohen, 2000), the Eiffel Tower represents both a “useless and irreplaceable edifice, the witness to a century and a forever new monument, an inimitable and endlessly reproduced object, a familiar world and heroic symbol, pure sign and unbridled metaphor” (Barthes, 1964, 1997, p. 4272). For department stores, representations of the capital’s monuments and views of Parisian neighbourhoods gave displays a “certificate of Parisianism” (Marabini & Gisors Isabey, 1967, p. 165), which was especially important for clothing collections benefitting from the city’s reputation as the internationally recognised capital of fashion. Progressive changes in the idea of what a monument is, taken up and reinterpreted by shop windows, explains the frequent use of symbolic edifices, vectors in a popular imagery far removed from any “tatty representation in which the great monument is reduced to the scale of a paper press” (Agulhon, 1984, 1997, p. 4590). Some may see these displays as a misappropriation of architecture, which on being reimagined by window-dressers becomes an artefact endowed with but a semblance of reality; while others may recognise a clever reinterpretation of urban referents in their capacity to conquer commercial space, and consequently the street.

3.2. From monument to brand image

22Observation of department store displays after 1980 reveals changes in form but not in discourse. The brand image of Paris retained such selling power that monuments tended to disappear in favour of a vision anchored in references to the past, or to previously commonplace urban elements which had acquired cult status. In 1976, Galeries Lafayette used metro stations—hitherto little appreciated and even less used to symbolise the tourist attractions of Paris—to stage dummies displayed in the window.

23Let us be clear, the display presented old wooden carriages dimly lit by tiny incandescent light bulbs which had once made travelling by underground a far more striking—or dreaded—experience, in a clear instance of nostalgia for days gone by, even if little appreciated, but then we are prone to embellish the past. In 1977, a bus stop with dummies standing next to it sufficed to summon up if not Paris, then at least the daily life of many users in a fairly droll staging. Even more surprising was the use of representations of the bottoms of buildings with ugly ducts and pipework, or else the plaque “Eau et gaz à tous les étages” (water and gas on all floors) still found outside many ground floors in Paris (Galeries Lafayette, Les rues à Paris, 1977). Although this realistic vision contrasted sharply with the romantic drawings of post-war Paris, it did not spell the end of a dream, quite the contrary in fact. This renewed imagery espoused the vision of a tourist fascinated by these urban identity markers become so habitual as to go unnoticed—a doorway, a bus stop, a metro carriage—but which fashioned a new and specifically Parisian sense of the picturesque.

24In the 1990s, the nostalgia was dialled up, bringing a batch of artistic referents drawn from songs and films of the 1960s. The lyrics of songs by Guy Béart—Il n’y a plus d’après, 1961—or Jacques Lanzmann and Anne Ségalen—Il est cinq heures, Paris s’éveille, sung by Jacques Dutronc, 1966—tended to replace images of monuments, which though still present were pushed into the background.

25Celebrations of the city turned readily to 1960s Paris, returning to a time gone by in which the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés or the empty streets of early morning Paris became objects in a new imagery. Mention must also be made of the number of times when views of Paris appeared in the background. There was nothing new about this other than the use of old sepia or black-and-white photos, reinforcing the image of a city whose ambiance, forever lost, was a key asset for window displays. Contemporary urban planning and architecture, for their part, were celebrated, albeit with a significant time lag: high-rise buildings in Front de Seine evoked less the major redevelopment of western Paris, which had been highly controversial at the time, than their celebration in Jean-Pierre Melville’s hit film Peur sur la ville, 1975. It was easier to accept the image of modern architecture once certain visionary producers had used it to stage their scripts.

26Lastly, in a strange paradox, views of the capital were replaced by postcard turnstiles, illustrating the success of derivative products in which real knowledge of buildings was replaced by commercial surrogates (Printemps, What’s new?, 2000). The image of the city disappeared in favour of its cultural product. Recently, images of department stores themselves have been used, with the Christmas displays at Printemps (2014) and Le Bon Marché (2016) presenting a model of their building to stage the habitual choreography of toys. Department stores directly celebrate themselves, placing their building within a process of urban heritagisation, with there no longer be any need for traditional imagery to secure their reputation.

27Fascination with architecture, monuments, and urban ambiances is still very much alive in window displays. It will be noted that certain edifices are never represented despite being very popular with tourists, such as the Arc de Triomphe, whose military symbolism and massive composition cannot rival with the elegance and modernity of the Eiffel Tower, or the Moulin Rouge, whose night-time shows do not appeal to a broad and rather staid clientele. The Tour Montparnasse, which has always been controversial, has never been used for a display, even though window-dressers could well be fascinated by its great height and attracted by the ease of composition provided by its strong vertical axis. Displays mobilise a consensual, not a subversive Paris.

28This study has only looked at department stores, but one could also examine the countless stores which include architecture within their displays. Lego has clearly grasped the importance of presenting models of monuments in the displays of its stores around the world to make them stand out. Lego Paris presents Notre-Dame and the Panthéon, while Lego Chicago exhibits the John Hancock Center and Trump Tower.

29This study is far from over. It could be enriched by analysing the many images of towns—dotted around the streets in all seasons and periods—that use monuments for a discourse celebrating both business and heritage. The way in which retail draws on the built environment to trigger the longings of passers-by raises the question of the role of heritage objects. Rather than targeting the circle of heritage lovers, these address a broader public who are unaware of the mechanisms at work in exploiting these urban referents. Appropriating images of monuments or urban ambiances for commercial strategies indirectly provides broader reception to what society considers to be representative of its heritage, inviting us to see how cultural transfers may frequently be at work in the myriad places of everyday life.