Madison Avenue Stroll
New York's Madison Ave. offers displays to attract tourists and locals
By Linda Cahan -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 4/1/2008
While I've adopted Portland, OR, as my new home, New York City, the city of my birth, is always in my heart. One of the things I enjoy most is to go for a walk in New York — especially with a camera.
Madison Avenue between 60th and 89th Streets is a busy business district in Manhattan. While this area sees a lot of tourists, the main business is local — neighborhood people who walk past these stores every day. With all that local traffic, shops on Madison Avenue are challenged to change their window displays every week or two. If displays remain in the window too long, customers eventually stop looking. The creative challenge is to enhance the identity, image and store brand while sticking to a budget.
New York is filled with visual stimulation, and the displays that stopped me in my tracks were all very geometric. A clean, simple, colorful window jumps out of the flat glass, and is easy to “read” and understand — even while passing at a quick clip.
