21st Century Dharma Bum by Brian Van der Horst  Tulipe Santene’s dancing baby lightening bugs in the windows of Galleries Lafayette Smiles of a Winter’s Night: before and behind Paris’ Christmas Windows How often to do you see a Parisian smiling? Thank Father Christmas for the holiday vitrines of Boulevard Haussmann. Each year les grands magasins Galleries Lafayette and Printemps vie with each other to create the most glamorous, adorable, cheery window displays in the world.  
Last week I spent a couple of hours at sunset in front of these triumphs of the window-dresser’s art. I had been rushing through the sidewalk crowds clogging the French capital—where pedestrians have been clocked at the top ambulatory speeds in France. Suddenly I stopped weaving and jostling through the shopper’s marathon. People were smiling at each other! A few steps later, I understood.  
As each harried shopper, troubled businessman, decrepit thug, or desperate femme de foyer passed the window, their eyes lit up, and their lips started careening toward their ears. The fashion statements were fantastic, mythical and wild; and the children’s windows astonishing triumphs of comic sight gags and concept. This tradition is something French parents plan on each year: “Let’s take the kids to see the Christmas windows,” is something I’ve been saying for 20 years. But this year I wanted to know who the people behind these fantastic creations were.  
Franck Banchet, the art director at Printemps, begins constructing his windows a year in advance. They just decided the themes for Noël 2008 last week, which of course—considering the head-to-head competition with next-door neighbor Galleries Lafayette—is top secret. Last month his team of 10 brainstormed “l’ensemble de l’histoire de vitres, le mode, si c’est forêt, neige, ou le féerique, par exemple,” he tells me. Construction of the windows begins in January. In February, Franck and his team visit the international trade fairs that offer Christmas decorations (notably in Frankfurt), toy exhibits and fashion designers. “Every year it is a challenge,” say Franck. “It must be playful, magic, innovative, and smiling. C’est une passion.”  
This year the theme at Printemps was “Noël Féerie Nordik.” They hired Odile Gilbert, who does hairstyles for Lagerfield and Christian La Croix. Around June this year they called up Grégoire Couziner, whose Kouz Productions scores original music for each window—from traditional X-mas to Doo-Wap! This is obviously big business—“We do 27% of our annual business each year during the Christmas season, so we spend 27% of our annual budget on these windows,” says Franck. “But we do use the same concepts in our larger stores throughout France.”  
Then there are the animated windows conceived expressly for the children at Printemps and the competing department stores in Paris. Some of my whirling, dancing favorites at Printemps this year include: The reindeer stampede, wolves in the kitchen, the refrigerator-raiding bears, the post-modern trio of polar bears and the reindeer photographers snapping back at tourists, and the flight of the snow owls. I think Ferida, who sells scarves and bath-sets next to a window of dancing penguins, has one of the best winter jobs in Paris.  
She says not everybody breaks into laughter, but most people do crack their sophisticated big city veneer with a nostalgic smile—perhaps of childhood. At Galleries Lafayette, they farm out the creative fun. For the past two years, Tulipe Santene, 34, of Buro Beluga has been art director for their windows. She started in March, when the theme of “Noël Brillant” was decided. She spent many weeks in the library searching for ideas, then presented mock-ups for Lafayette’s director of merchandising Helen Lafourtade. “They’d say which ones they liked, and then I went into production in July,” says Tulipe. “It’s an incredible fairy playground of toys, where I can play with dolls for a whole year.” She set up the windows behind closed drapes for most of October, then unveiled her creations at a invitation-only premier while igniting their façades illuminées designed by Valerio Festi: 150,000 light bulbs strung on seven kilometers of wire by crew of 150 workmen on November 8th, complete with snow cannons, searchlights and film stars like Mathilde Siegner.  
Tulipe’s imagination is a bit more pixique than the crew at Printemps. For Galleries Lafayette she came up with the baby fairy lightning bugs at the head of this article; crews of beavers stamping out “beware of reindeers” traffic signs, dancing snow balls, and penguins on parade.  
The kids I saw inspecting the exhibits were delirious with joy, their parents glowing. Passer-bys did delighted double-takes as they stumbled onto the windows and were wrenched from their seasonal grumps and occupational obsessions for being sufficiently “serious” as they went about their business. Perhaps the loneliest person on the Grand Boulevard of lights that night was the bell-ringer from the Salvation Army who hovered over a nearly empty caldron for the poor, yet ported a brave, if wane holiday smile on his face.  
For more information about the best free holiday lightshows of Paris, click here. Copyright 2007 Brian Van der Horst (www.bvdh.com). All rights reserved.
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