Untitled Cafe & Art Supplies
The art of window display has a venerable history dating back to the first department stores in the mid-19th century. A shop window must make an immediate connection, drawing in customers and signifying the goods that await within.
A good shop window will attract the eye with design elements like colour, texture, lighting and line. And then there are the window displays that leave you slack-jawed.
Odd, old-school or plain wacky, the following shop windows always repay a second glance.
Enjoy them as art - ingenious paintbrush display
It's hard not to gape at the displays in
Untitled Cafe & Art Supplies' windows. Above the items for sale is a a perfect arch of suspended paintbrushes. This is best appreciated at night when downlights lend the creation an extraordinary drama.
Beneath it are pencils, paints and other ordinary artists' supplies. But the owners like to display their skeleton as well. The reclining figure under the brush arch is, to say the least, memorable.
The art supply shop has a cafe
next door. Reviewed
here.
Hattam's Menswear in Elsternwick is a venerable old drapery that stocks up-to-the-minute outfits. Shirts are uniformly striped or checked and trousers include everything from Levi's to Hard Yakka. They've even got a
cash railway - a system of wires and pulleys that transported money around shops before modern cash registers. It's in working order and staff are happy to demonstrate.
Hattam's Menswear
These windows are unself-consciously retro. Hand-lettered price placards adorn the items and the merchandise is changed often. Displays are so daggy, they're cool.
Hand-lettered price signs
I don't know about you, but every so often, I get the urge to dress up as a Super Mario Brother. Or Marie Antoinette. Or Darth Vader, Alice in Wonderland, a ballerina, a gangster, a rabbit or a pirate. And
The Fancy Dress Party Place stocks all those outfits, plus around 1000 more.
The windows are changed to reflect the seasons (Halloween, Easter, Christmas) and popular movies and stage shows (The Great Gatsby, King Kong).
The giant penguins belong in a category of their own. They're a bit like overweight onesies and, I'm told, are very hot to wear. But they make eye-catching shop mannequins.
The Fancy Dress Party Place
This shop promises to make your wildest, childhood dress-up box fantasies come true.
Scary penguin suit
Where are your favourite unusual shop windows?
