{"id":9276,"date":"2010-12-23T11:16:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T16:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=9276"},"modified":"2010-12-23T11:16:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T16:16:12","slug":"the-windows-of-bergdorf-goodman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/23\/the-windows-of-bergdorf-goodman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Windows of Bergdorf Goodman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A window featuring a Roberto Cavalli dress.<\/p><\/div>\n

On a recent winter afternoon, I sat down for tea with Linda Fargo and David Hoey of Bergdorf Goodman, on the top floor of the store, in the restaurant overlooking southern Central Park. Fargo, who has an immaculate silver bob, is clad in a black Balenciaga dress, capped with a furry Mongolian gilet by Vera Wang, her throat studded with a necklace by a designer named Grazia Bozza, whom she discovered while vacationing in Capri. Hoey is wearing a Band of Outsiders suit\u2014\u201ca journeyman\u2019s vest,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s a symbol of a real working man who rolls up his sleeves.\u201d<\/p>\n

And roll up his sleeves he must, even at Fifth Avenue\u2019s most refined department store. Hoey and Fargo are the masterminds behind Bergdorf\u2019s window displays, and they had invited me to come talk with them about their work and their new book, a $550 lavender-sheathed tome (\u201cOur signature color,\u201d explains Fargo) published by Assouline. Titled Windows of Bergdorf Goodman<\/a><\/em>, the book catalogs more than ten years of their work, interspersed with remarks and witty one-liners from some of Bergdorf’s closets friends (Bette Midler, Vogue<\/em> editor Hamish Bowles, and street photographer Bill Cunningham, to name a few). <\/p>\n

Hoey dresses between 250 to 350 window a year, while Fargo oversees the process (\u201cShe\u2019s like the editor-in-chief.\u201d). The two are good friends\u2014one is often finishing the other\u2019s sentences, and they have fond memories of working together as we all look through Windows<\/em>. \u201cRemember the time I tried to create that window about heaven?\u201d asks Fargo. \u201cI wanted the girls to be floating, diaphanous, so I thought I would try those smoke machines. I went to Canal Street, dealt with those strange guys who sell those kind of things, and then I remember us getting locked inside the window and the machine wouldn’t stop! I thought we were going to choke to death. And we were thinking about how we were going to have to put SOSs on the glass so that somebody would let us out. And then finally\u2014you get into the windows from the fine-jewelry department\u2014we\u2019re pounding on the door, and somebody in fine jewelry hears the pounding and opened the door, and we tumbled out onto the selling floor in a big puff of smoke.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cFor some reason,\u201d says Hoey, \u201cFourteen years ago, the windows locked from the inside. I haven\u2019t the vaguest idea why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoey works out of an atelier on the eighth floor of Bergdorf, where he\u2019s assisted by five full-time people. \u201cIt has a lot of props, old stuff on shelves, and it\u2019s packed a little bit like hoarder\u2019s lair. It\u2019s on purpose; it has to be like that. Sometimes we have to do a window, and we have, like, five minutes to grab something. We never do a window that doesn\u2019t have some statement.\u201d Though later, after our tea with Fargo, Hoey confides in me down by the elevator bank, \u201cYou know that show Hoarders<\/em>? Sometimes I\u2019m afraid that they\u2019ll see the windows and then think of that show.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nonsense, I told him.<\/p>\n

Hoey walks me outside to show me this year\u2019s holiday windows. They\u2019re a sight to behold\u2014playful, luxurious, overflowing. We pause in front of a window containing a giant wooden winged horse (\u201cI found that on 1st Dibs\u201d) transporting a designer-clad mannequin to the imaginary heavens, and passersby from the street collect around us. \u201cThese holiday windows represent a years worth of work,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about next year already.\u201d <\/p>\n

Below, a slide show of some of the more memorable Bergdorf windows. <\/p>\n

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