The Principles Of Design

(and how dressing windows is harder than you think)

This is the store Christmas tree covered in mostly hand made goodies from Forest Whimsy and Me. Also a few cheap plastic glittery snowflakes from China.

Bitter Betty heard my tortured plea for help with my sad-ass windows and sent me a list o f suggestions which made me immediately kick my own shins because it's stuff I already know that I failed to apply to my windows. The most important thing is to have a color story. Duh Angelina...I've only known about the power of color since I was born and my mother made bean paintings in the hippie commune we lived in! So Bob and Sue's aprons now belong together. Same green. Plus Betty mentioned the use of negative space and making an impact with things being grouped together. She suggested Bob and Sue get closer, which is what they wanted anyway.

This big window still isn't quite there. I'm not sure it ever completely will be. From now on I will start by thinking of the story, then picking the color story, then arranging things in a spacially eye-grabbing arrangement. The color story may end up preceeding the merchandise story. But I won't be setting the scene until I have figured out the other parts first.

I was telling Bitter Betty that I spent all this money to become a fashion designer. I got my Associates degree in fashion design at FIDM in San Francisco. If I had really thought things through I would have realized that I wasn't going to be a chain smoking skinny chick with lots of gay friends forever. I should have realized that it was more likely that I was going to end up needing merchandising skills. I could have taken the merchandising courses instead. Oh well, that's not how life works and I'm fine with that.

Re-educating one's self is half the fun of life. Learning whole new skills, or learning that everything you already know applies to things you didn't expect. So this is my new improved little window. Strong color story. Strong holiday message. We worked really hard on this so if anyone thinks it sucks, I am going to have to clobber you. For full impact, let's revisit the window as it was when I was forgetting to apply every design principle I already knew to my new career:

The laundry line was cute, but messy to the eye. I was attempting to do elegantly pale with my paper quilt, but Betty pointed out that our whole thing is vivid happy strong color. We have filled our store with it. It's not a tribute to Wendy Addison. We are not about quiet beauty. We are about filling your life with exuberant unappologetic displays of color to bring your spirit forward into the present no matter what you might be doing. Right, so this window was so "BLAH" I almost cried.

The purpose of the paper quilt was twofold (I've always wanted to say that!): The first is that I needed a back drop for this window so that the inside of the store wouldn't distract the eye. Dionne from Strawberry Creek had told me about some super creative windows she's seen in San Francisco made completely out of paper. So it gave me the idea to do something creative with paper. My shop is very focused on hand made things and vintage style things so I thought it would be cool to make a quilt out of paper.

The second purpose is to take the stupid inane holiday cliches and make them more meaningful. I am now taking part in pushing consumerism (which is an interesting mixed bag all on its own) so I feel like there needs to be humor, reality, fun, and warmth reflected in the things my store represents. I hate all the saccharin shit stores plaster everywhere for Christmas. "Have a holly jolly Christmas" for example. Or "It's a season of giving" for another. What do the holidays really mean to people? Or to me? I think someone needs to spread a more natural and honest holiday message. Yes, it's a season for giving, and it's also a season for getting plastered while eating the most awful traditional things you would never normally eat if your beloved gram hadn't made it specially for you. The holidays are a time for having fun, getting festive, spending money, eating sugar, and hanging out with friends. It's also a time for hunger, freezing to death, feeling inadequate, and coming undone in a chaotic family environment.

I am so unoriginal in my use of words to make commerce more meaningful, Kenneth Cole has been doing it for years now and I have to say it has made me respect his company a lot more since seeing his ads tackling sticky issues like poverty and aids. Things that could alienate potential customers. His company made the bold move to make the statement that you can care about fashion (and they want you to buy their shit), but that you need to also care about what's going on around you. I think it's wonderful that Kenneth Cole, as a company, isn't pretending they live in a rich world where everyone's trying to steal Paris Hilton's stylist.

I expect I will use words a lot in my windows and store.

Coming soon: Principles of business (and how to squeeze blood out of turnips and family)