February 01, 2009

Welcome

For many months I've been walking by all the interesting, fancy stores in the Manhattan downtown neighborhood of SoHo, where I've lived for almost eight years, and I've been thinking about the fascinating storefront windows that I've seen along these streets over the years. The window displays are as seasonal, cyclical, and fickle as fashion itself . . . and often as artistic in their beckoning commercialism.

And suddenly it struck me as sad, even wasteful, that all this mesmerizing creative output is so temporary, and almost completely unrecorded.

So I decided to build this website, doing my best to record the interesting storefront window displays that flicker and change daily around me as I walk through this little village within a city. Because these windows are in SoHo -- home to some of the world's premier fashion houses' flagship stores, uniquely original boutiques, and scrappy little idiosyncratic labors of love, all visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists seeking an unparalleled shopping experience -- the windows also serve as a bellwether of the fashion whirlwind around us, snapshots of this moment in sartorial history.

I'm not really a fashion person, although I admire it. And as you'll see from the pictures I take, especially as I'm just starting out, I'm no photographer, either. But if I keep this up, I'll get better, and this record of creative endeavor should become richer over time.

My plan is to photograph all the stores in the area once to start, and then update day-to-day as they transform over time.

As I'm just starting out, I'd love to hear suggestions on how to improve this blog.

Thanks!

No comments: