AW19 Christmas Window, The Conran Shop

Location: The Conran Shop, Chelsea Date: 7th of October, 2019 Our 2019 Christmas windows at Chelsea and Marylebone featured 47 kilometres of recycled ribbon, with over 26,000 red ribbon drops forming an immersive experience. The previous all-white Christmas windows meant this year’s window was to focus on colour, honing in on one colour in particular to dramatise and lure emotion. Aiming for a contemporary interpretation of Christmas, Stephen Briars, Conran’s Creative Director and Betsy Smith, Head of Visual, drew inspiration from Mark Rothko’s paintings, Anish Kapoor pigment sculptures and James Turrells light installations, developing a concept based on the power of colour itself. This project took three weeks to complete at the Chelsea store, creating a truly dramatic all-consuming display. Pre-rolled ribbon panels were hung overhead, each panel was categorised into different ribbon length, a strict sequenced plan had to be followed when installing each grid. Lights were also hung in a specific sequence, with lowered lights fitted above the simple long plinths that were to be used as the main display fixtures. Once the grids were installed, the red ribbon lengths were cut-free and unrolled, creating a tiered installation that emitted a festive warmth playing with light and shadow. A carefully edited selection of products were displayed on the plinths with thick felt tops. The selection, placement and styling of the product required careful consideration as the plinths needed to be full enough to look seductive and enticing, but also clean enough to echo the geometric aesthetic at the same time. To achieve this, we added different scales and heights of product, to avoid it looking flat from a street-point-of-view. We also considered the adjacency of products carefully to ensure we had a thread running through the arrangement, including the material, colour and function of the product. Images courtesy of Bruno Rondinelli