4thedesignation: What Inspires you?

What inspires you creatively? For me it can be the shiny cover of a magazine spread, my family, the colors and textures on a new pair of stilettos, or especially the beauty that lies in nature. One company that has such inspirational and creative ideas is Anthropologie. Their dreamy window displays take you to a place of wonder and amazement.

Anthropologie’s team of artists are truly expert designers in their use of ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Many national stores are enslaved with their branding that they lose all sense of the magic of individuality that emerges through a brand’s image. Unlike national stores, Anthropologie’s shop has its own small team of artists that do all of the display at their location. Graphic designers, painters, and sculptors all work together to create the unique designs you see on display. Just like the elements in “stone soup” the team of artists use the essence of everyday items and transform them into such whimsical visual displays for clothing. I absolutely adore Anthropologie’s aesthetic design, and you will too when you see such creativity without boundaries. And in a world where environment and sustainability are such a huge topic, Anthropologie’s ethics are apparent in their window diplays’ use of sustainable items in ground-breaking layouts.

Anthropologie likes to focus on the change of seasons that affect the style of clothing as well. In one season, their teams are focusing on larger than life, woven, wooden sculptures and spent over six weeks to come up with their shop’s individual take on the idea.
During the rainy seasons, a wonderfully innovative use and re-use of water bottles, sprayed in spring tones and cut as if flowers emerging after the rains, have been a popular window design.

This really is a clever idea and I am pleased to see the re-use of an otherwise discarded material and perhaps proof that we don’t necessarily need large budgets to create an innovative visual strategy for selling clothes.

Here, it is spring and that means the backdrop around the clothes must encapture the mood and feelings associated with spring right?

This fascinating window display is made of suspended plastic storage bags filled with soil and plants and other plants that grew from seed or bulb there in the window.

And when the harsh winter rolls around, how does Anthropologie warm up their customers? With hot chocolate and cascading marshmallows ofcourse! Marshmallows falling into mugs for hot chocolate and paper dolie snowflakes, will do the job. This does a great job in attracting customers and giving them nostalgia for those Wintery Wonderland days.