TheFINE ART WINDOW DECORATION

Behind the window displays in Harvard Square is a group of store employees, from a trained window designer to a parttime photographer, who use the holidays-and corresponding window displays-to show off their talents.

Some use more structure, some use more creativity, but all try to draw in customers with their unique art.

"[Window decoration] has a great effect. It's really the only way of communicating to people walking down the street. It's extremely important," says Kristin R. Emerson, store designer for the Crate and Barrel located in Harvard Square.

The Planning Process

At Crate and Barrel, the holiday windows are the result of five months of planning.

Staffers meet at the end of August to plan the holiday decorations; by October, the design is concrete.

Each of the approximately 70 nationwide stores counts a designer among its employees.

Emerson went through a six-month design training program before achieving designer status.

A holder of a painting and drawing degree from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, she says she finds window design an appropriate release for her creativity.

"[Crate and Barrel] tries to instill in you a sense of being a shopkeeper," says Emerson, scissors and papers sticking out of her overall pockets.

Surrounded by half-filled boxes, plastic wrap and stacks of new merchandise, Emerson certainly looks the part of a shopkeeper.

"[Crate and Barrel] is willing to invest time and energy into the store designers," she says.

For the Crate and Barrel-style holiday, certain elements are constant nationwide-the shelves and blocks are the same store-to-store, for example-but within certain constraints, designers can go wild.

"The general feel of the decorations will have direction, but you take it from there," Emerson says.

The Customer Contingent

One reason why each designer gets such leeway is because each store caters to a different clientele.

"A mall customer will be a lot different from a Harvard Square customer," Emerson says.

"Our customer is really different than at other Crate and Barrels....It's a very educated customer, a very worldly customer, who is willing to invest in merchandise that is really special," she says.

A children's easel, decorated with a picture of a snowman, is thus featured in one of the windows; in another, stacks of cobalt blue glassware-big sellers in the Square-are prominent.

"The windows relate to each other color-wise and feeling-wise," Emerson says, noting the reds, greens and gold echoed throughout the displays, but adds that each window has unique features.

One caveat for the Square decorations, she says, is to keep it simple. "Anything that's kitschy, we don't sell a lot of," she says.

About Town

The holidays pose a unique problem for window decorators: they have to both sell specific gifts and draw in customers with unique displays.

At Clothworks, a clothing store, Debbie A. Dougan says the foot traffic during the holidays greatly increases the number of customers, due in no small part to the window display.

"It's amazing to me how much the window works," she says.

"Our window was about letting people know we have a lot of good gift ideas," Dougan says, "and people come in all the time wanting to know what is in the window."

At Dickson Bros. Hardware, the same phenomenon occurs.

In place of ornaments, the windows have dangling pieces of mirror, metallic hangers and different types of chain.

"With the chains, people started coming in asking 'Oh, do you carry chain?' rather than asking why chain is hanging with glassware," laughs Jeff S. Benskin, who designed the windows.

A Creative Outlet

Though his artistic efforts sometimes go unappreciated, Benskin still says he sees the window as an outlet for his creativity.

"I'm a freelance photographer, so there's this creative side," he says. "It's a good way to satisfy that need at my day job."

"When I've got a window to do, I come in early. I'm out here in the alley spray-painting, and I'll run back in to help a customer," he says.

His theory of window decoration?

"It's an odd way of showing what we carry," he explains. One idea he had was to paint three pillars-"what a nice boutique would have"-but instead of topping them with chunk-heeled shoes, topping them with a hammer and nails.

Theories of design-if they exist at all-vary from store to store.

At Cardullo's, the window display is an informal collaboration of employees' A-3 WINDOWS