A is for Anthropologie

Anthropologie. ACAD. Art!

My three A's. It's no secret that Urban Outfitter's owned lifestyle chain Anthropologie is at the top of my list for absolute favourite stores. It certainly counts as one of my happy places. One could get lost in there for hours and I have for that matter. It's a curated shopping experience. So when I looked into their careers section on their website awhile back I was tickled pink to find an opening at their Granville store for the Display Coordinator position – essentially the in-store artist for the spectacular, dazzling, stop-you-in-your-track's (seriously I watched this happen several times. So fun.) installations, windows, signage and other visual elements in their stores.

Again, I've been missing the tactile aspect of designing and creating while locked behind my computer working almost solely on digital freelance work. So I whipped together my resumé and applied with gusto and was completely over the moon when I got a call from them. I can say the whole process has been an absolute treat, even for the simple opportunity to reopen and widen my creative hatch. Three interviews later, I'm in the semi-excruciating stage of waiting for their decision, but in the meantime am really pleased to showcase the project I was asked to complete for them.

The project which was to be done between the 1st and 2nd interviews was to create a small, medium and large scale display for the store with a $25 budget. The parameters were left really wide open, which presented a great challenge, but also some pretty amazing opportunities. The main things my Visual Communications degree instilled in me were conceptualization, craftsmanship, and above all creative thinking. (My three C's I guess). A mainstay of Anthropologie's displays is manipulating materials and recyclable materials at that. So with my ideas and supplies in hand I got down to business.

I hand stitched my process pages together using embroidery thread.

Several brainstorming sessions later the theme I decided to work off of was A Storybook Summer. My jumping off point came initially from a book I had just read called Tiger Lily, which is based on the Peter Pan story and has really sumptuous summertime descriptions of Neverland. I was really taken with the landscape depictions but didn't really think that it specifically fit the Anthropologie canon. So after working through it some more this was where I landed. Even as a creative I've always been amazed at how one idea can totally lead you somewhere completely different. Nifty! I really wanted to stick to a theme that would work well with later summer, when the season becomes more settled, incredibly lush and intimate, particularly as the Spring/early Summer displays had already been installed. This theme really became about the quintessential summer day. To introduce the entire theme and in sticking with the idea of the Anthropologie woman I wrote a small story introduction which loosely wove in all of my display elements:

Bonus Display: A Walk In The Clouds

Oh boy, so many ideas to rein in. This was an extra concept for a window display. The idea was to create a background of pennies, which would show as a gradient from the brightest copper to the most oxidized blue, representing a bronzed sunset sky. In the foreground my thought was to have these puffy, voluptuous white clouds surrounding the displayed apparel. Dressing the window this way would give the impression of the dress form walking through a sun filled sky.

Appropriate lighting would really enhance this display, giving the clouds their glow and the pennies their shine.

It is possible to oxidize pennies, but I didn't have the time needed, so I had to mimic the effect with paint. The prototype of the cloud was built over chicken wire primarily using white plastic shopping bags, but also utilizing materials like white and dyed coffee filters, white fabric of various hues and rubber balloons. The small prototype did sort of resemble a pile of laundry (my boyfriends words) but I feel in a larger setting as intended it would be soft and full. As seen in the close up of the cloud below, the additional materials lent it a rich detailed feel. I played with the idea of adding colour through the coffee filters in the sketches and didn't really like it there, I think because there was too much saturation or maybe too many colours. But I really like how gorgeous the faint blue ended up being in the mock-up.

Small Display: The Idle Hour

The small display really ended up being the most literal representation of my theme. I liked the idea of reading classic summer/vacation books and lounging on those really hot days when the sun warms the concrete and brick. And so! Brick books. Hand painted and hand lettered, with classic titles and authors. I am so going to make a few more of these for my shelves and am really loving having them at home now. My sketches detailed having them stacked on the store shelves with kitchen merchandise incorporated (the shot of them I have at home actually includes an Anthropologie pot and set of measuring cups). They could also be stacked to create a wall – with the painted bricks, some plain ones and perhaps even some real books – making a dynamic shelving unit for merchandise display purposes. Also really useful bookends, for the books the store already sells. The bricks I scavenged from an alley in my neighbourhood.

Medium Display: The Swimming Hole

The idea of the swimming hole was one that stuck from the original Neverland take-off, although it initially began as a mermaid lagoon sort of deal. What I liked about the idea here was the image of overgrown flora, that is somehow synonymous with late summer. Especially here in Vancouver, where by July you're goggling at how hugemongous the plants have gotten. There was something really lovely and intimate and female about having these overgrown plants sort of screening you. Swimming, cool water. Grooming. Mermaids. A sort of loose association there, but I thought it would work well in the lounge and bath department of the store with big lily pads stretched over a display table featuring towels, toiletries etc. The streamers coming down and giving it an underwater feel. I also sketched the concept with a mirror placed on the table to reflect back and enhance the water idea.

The lily pad was constructed over a chicken wire frame. In reality I would probably make the stem out of something like conduit pipe, fitted into a flange and bolted into the floor, which would clean up the look of it and give it the durability needed in the face of customers in and around the installation. To make the lily pad I paper machéd two tones of green tissue paper over the frame and varnished it once dry to give it a waxy look. 

The lily itself was made out of dyed coffee filters. It's a little too big for this small version of the lily pad, in my opinion. It also suffered a bit when I transferred it home again on the bus. Ideally I would probably give it a more distinctive shape, perhaps by somehow folding it, but using the same materials and colours. The center of it is Spanish moss, which is nice textural addition.

The water streamers were the most fun to make. I had a rainbow of coffee filters drying on my kitchen floor for a day (I will try to get some process pictures up at some point). If I were to stick to one material for the streamers it would be these. Although I like the bell shaped egg-carton seaweed-esque ones too. The 'plastic 'bubbles' I really didn't like the result of at all. They are made out of plastic cup bottoms. I do like that they are out of the box thinking though and considering them further I think I might try to poke some holes in them with a soldering iron, to give them a more realistic bubble effect. Paint I think could still be applied with a pattern/stencil such as styrofoam perhaps. Yep. Still thinking, processing . . .

 

Large Display: Wind In The Feathers

The large scale display, like the medium one couldn't be mocked up as a precise replica, so it's the one that imagination and visualization need to aid the most. The concept here is a feather chandelier. Light, airy and oh so pretty. I sketched it with the intent of placing it over the cash-wrap section of the store, a main dramatic focal point in the Granville store. To execute this I would use white feathers with dyed tips, creating these tiered, feathered drips of colour. Very full, with lots of feathers. Bright vivid colours for a more modern and edgy flair.

  

The painted tips on the white feathers.

Alternatively the feathers could simply be feather shapes, cut out of cardboard, paper or another material. Feathers are actually quite challenging to work with because they are so lightweight. But gosh it sure is hard to resist them, they're just so delicate and beautiful. Thinking this installation through, on a grander scale a clear bead would work to weigh them down but would also add an additional element to the piece. Love, love, love the idea and would really benefit from further exploration.

The ribbons in warm colours represented hot air; the cool colours a cool breeze.

Refine, refine, refine. A good ol' design mantra. Or less is more. The cohesiveness of the project is something that I reflected on substantially the week following its presentation. But I think given a more defined direction and with more than a week to prototype such creative decisions would have been solved with a little more trial and error. I would in retrospect probably have pushed using one or two materials consistently through all of the display elements so that it wasn't quite so all over the place. But that being said I think I allowed myself ample opportunity to showcase the breadth of my creative ideas, conceptual skills and implement several of my craftsmanship abilities and I'm happy with the overall ideas.

The lovely ladies of the visual team at Anthropologie were really sweet, encouraging and engaging. So whether or not I end up part of their team, it was an amazing experience to meet them, make some art and have a shot at the creative side of the Anthropologie world.

Here's to you Anthro! Thanks!