Re-Inventing Fifth Avenue
by Deirdre Towers
Yesterday, I strolled through Saks Fifth Avenue, glancing at price tags and snapping photos. It was empty of course because of Covid. Or was it deserted because of the bricks-and-mortar retail implosion?
Once the luxurious spine of New York City catering to predominantly white ladies who lunch and the men who keep them, Fifth Avenue may have to reinvent itself. What if shoppers don’t come back because they moved to their second or third homes and prefer home delivery?
NYC is a hub of innovators, designers, and financial wizards advising new and old money. Couldn’t we juggle everything the city has to offer so that it could reset itself? A reimagining of Fifth Avenue could release energy that ripple through the five boroughs, sparking ideas, rekindling optimism.
Some options to consider…
- Window dressing. Department stores allocate a considerable sum for their window design. Could a few of the windows serve as cabaret stages? The budget for materials could be switched to dancers who change every 15 minutes, offering a preview of performances off-off or on Broadway. Anita Durst, who started Chashama decades ago to provide affordable workspace for visual artists in New York City, has proven that performances in storefronts enliven neighborhoods.
In 1929, Bonwit Teller hired Salvador Dalí as their first window display designer. From such a bold, eccentric start, department stores have lost their nerve. Gene Moore, who designed approximately 5,000 windows at Tiffany’s in the 50–60s, used concepts or works of modern art in his windows, including those of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Alexander Ney, and Andy Warhol. R.H. Macy originated the concept of the holiday window display in 1874. What if one window was a portal into the natural wonders at the American Museum of Natural History?
2. Greenery. Roof scrapping plants and flowers could greet shoppers as they step off the sidewalk into an urban jungle, making everyone look up, inhale, and smile. This space could feel like a sanctuary, a place you would want to return to again and again. Taking a page from The Highline, a favorite for tourists, the browsers might feel so content and connected to nature, that they would buy, buy, buy, or just sit and soak in the oxygen. Everything from flowers, birds, and pets could be for sale. Salesmen/designers could mingle with their potential clients to develop green schemes, hydroponic and vertical gardens, for homes, offices, schools, and hospitals. The Plant Shed is already expanding its popular stores to include coffee bars and ceramic boutiques.
3. Intoxicants (Coffee, Wine, Cannabis) Nestled among the floors could be niches to unwind, chat, and flirt. Everything could be for sale in these bars —the cups, glasses, pipes, and artwork. Interior designers would differentiate the look, feel, and smell of each bar to attract a vast range of clientele, including entrepreneurs searching for ideas.
4. Living mannequins. They slouch, pose & Vogue, partner, gossip. Perhaps these mannequins could give you the feedback you desperately desire, as they glide with you to and from dressing rooms.
5. Robot jukebox. Choreographed robots, such as the ones created by Boston Dynamics in their hilarious 2020 video set to Do You Love Me?, could be just the entertainment every family visiting Fifth Avenue needs for their little Johnnie & Jill. A throwback to the jukeboxes in 1950s diners and a throw forward to artificial intelligence (AI), this robot jukebox could be programmed so the visitor could select his tune — just as one punched a button on the jukebox of yore, pay for his selection(s), and then dance with the robot.
6. Persona. In this mash-up of NYC, the visitor can put in their preferences at a ground floor kiosk to know where in the building to go — to be where they belong, or aspire to belong. This new mapping system eliminates the current organization of floors by gender and class and offers more possibilities for the fluid-minded. Those seeking a funky East Village feel could go to the basement boutiques — Fifth Avenue Underground — with its bare pipes and bricks. The grande-dames, actualized & wannabes, would be escorted to a VIP private elevator that opens onto a long hallway leading to a giant safe, behind which unimaginable pleasures and temptations await.
7. Penthouse. Open for private parties, the penthouse could support an on-going jam session — cordoned off to performers and paying customers. Just as the Swing series at Lincoln Center appealed to every ethnicity in the city, the music could shift from jazz to samba; hip-hop to flamenco; kizomba to tango.
8. Time Machine. New York, New York. It’s a wonderful town. So many legends, myths, cultures. What if the curators of Fifth Avenue chose a different era for each year to celebrate in a corner of each building. The people gaga for the roaring twenties, edgy seventies, 1890s could be given a map of Fifth Avenue with a list of events germane to their enthusiasms. Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly sang it so well, it’s a helluva town.
9. Immersion. Curators could offer one or more interactive installations in the store. Nothing new…when you consider the ingenuity of FAO Schwartz Toy Store which has been dazzling kids since 1862.
10. Books. Book nooks with comfy furniture could be scattered through the stores. The presence of books would make a bow to all the famous bookstores — Rizzoli's, Doubleday, Scribner’s — that once had homes on the Avenue, in a day when everyone read with the enthusiasm that people play video games.
The metamorphosis of NYC didn’t happen overnight. In the 1950s, my father insisted that we wore stylish hats and white gloves whenever we paraded Fifth Avenue. Everyone on the Avenue was dressed to the nines in those days, even though the pollution was so bad then our gloves were black by the time we got home.
At that time, class and brains seemed to determine the residents and visitors to this Avenue, with bookstores offering a counterpoint to the jewels of Tiffanys and Bergdorf Goodwin. Let's make a nod to Audrey Hepburn and her Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Lisa Foderaro wrote in the New York Times in 1997 about Phyllis E. Grann, former president of Penguin Putnam, recalling that “As a young child in a very different New York City she would hole up in the children’s section at the elegant old Scribner’s French Beaux-Arts bookstore while her mother shopped nearby at Best & Company.”
The plaque for Charles Scribner’s Sons, founded in 1846, remains on the Fifth Avenue store designed by Ernst Flagg, as do the bones of this marvelous store with its brass-railed balconies circling the open ground floor. From expanding minds to embellishing faces, the store was recently the home for Sephora, and now Club Monaco.
With some nudges in the right ribs of the rich and powerful, New York will rebound as the most thrilling city to recharge and mingle with the most singular personalities in the world. Investors respond to innovation strategies. Witness the support behind Lululemon’s “Power of Three: brand & community; product; guest experience” fueling a five-year plan to build a 25,000-square-foot experiential store in Chicago.
Chashama founder Anita Durst knows the impact of vision. “Artists come to New York looking for space to create, present, and connect. For the past 24 years, it has given me much joy to help over 20,000 artists fulfill their dreams.”
Everyone, not just artists, wants to fulfill their dreams, however, suppressed.
The New York Times published an article by Tariro Mzezewa on Sunday, January 17, 2021, titled “Daydreaming is Free, and Freeing.” “The important thing about imagination is that it gives you optimism,” said Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Positive Psychology Center there.
If we all do some fancy dreaming, planning, and yes, investment in change, inspired evolution, we could enjoy another Roaring Twenties!