Lifestyles of Saratoga owner Heidi Owen West doesn’t just see the massive windows on the front of her store as an opportunity to showcase the clothes she’s selling inside. She’s sees them as a blank canvas.
“Our first jaw-dropping window for the holidays was when we took pine bough skirts, white shirts and red ribbons and lined them up in the window,” she says. “It was a stunner. People were stopping, small children were looking, and it just stopped people in their tracks. We said, ‘Wow, we really have something here.’”
That display kicked off a decade of Owen West and her team trying to one-up themselves, both with intricate holiday displays and other themed window masterpieces throughout the year. One memorable winter display incorporated two horse women (paper maché horse heads made by local artist Catherine Wagner Minnery placed on mannequins) and a miniature ice skating scene within one of their skirts. Yeah, that intricate.
This year’s display will be ready immediately following Black Friday, and while she can’t give away all the details, Owen West said not to expect the scene to stay within the confines of the window. “Our latest imaginative idea—we’ve done it a couple of times—is to bring the display through the glass and up outside the building,” she says. And the display at across-the-street sister shop Caroline + Main? “All I can say,” she teases, “is ‘disco balls.’”
