ABSTRACT
In 2014, Saks Fifth Avenue took home the top prize at PAVE's design: retail Winning Windows awards for the best holiday windows in New York City. Collectively titled "An Enchanted Experience", Saks' windows featured a set of six displays showing costumes from designer collections that honored the history of the store since its beginnings in the "roaring 20s". In the mid-nineteenth century, the opening of the first department stores in Europe and North America drove the development of an array of strategies meant to enhance the presentation of merchandize, giving rise to a new era of ever-greater "cathedrals of consumption". Architectures of Display: Department Stores and Modern Retail departs from the premise that the presentation of merchandize cannot be separated from the modern materials and building techniques that have been the preferred focus of architectural and art historians so far.
