and passers-by. David Jones Elizabeth St, Sydney David Jones’ iconic Christmas windows at its Elizabeth St flagship store in Sydney this year feature retrospective designs of the department store chain’s 175th year history. These include ‘On Seven’, David Jones Food Hall, toy department, the Queen’s 1954 visit, the David Jones historical Christmas Choir, and Eddie the Elephant. DJs’ window displays have been in construction around six months, with more than 5000 man hours spent on the creation and installation of the windows. All puppets are have been created by David Poulton, the puppeteer of David Jones’ windows for the past eight years. A kilometre of 10kg breaking strength nylon is used for the supporting strings and around 150 specially designed cams create movement so it looks as though the puppets are interacting with each other. The David Jones windows will be on display until December 25. Myer Bourke St Mall, Melbourne For 2013 Myer has selected the children’s book, Gingerbread Friends, by US author, Jan Brett, to base its windows on. Gingerbread Friends tells the tale of Gingerbread Baby as he sets out on an adventure to find a friend of his own. The story follows Gingerbread Baby as he heads to the local bakery in search of a kindred spirit, only to be chased away by a hungry mama mouse and a long line of creatures, to take refuge back at home, where he finds that he already has a host of friends at home. For the past 20 years the team at Stage One, led by John Kerr, has been responsible for the Myer Christmas animated windows, from inspiration, through to creation and installation. Six windows along the store’s 88m facade present the yearly themed windows, with the seventh showing a traditional nativity scene. Myer Melbourne’s Christmas windows will be on display until January 5, 2014. Four identical windows can also be seen at Myer Brisbane.   Myer Christmas window facts The Myer Melbourne Christmas animated windows have been in operation for 58 years.  Each year more than an estimated 1.2 million children and adults visit the Myer Christmas windows To create the 2013 windows the following materials were used: 400l of scenic paint; 60m of scenic canvas; 350l of scenic texture; 80l of PVA glue; 50sqm of cardboard; 35 cubic metres of polystyrene; 144sqm of plywood; 900m of timber; 24 bags of snowflake (equivalent to 480l); and six bags of mica flakes (equivalent to 120l). To create the desired texture of gingerbread for Gingerbread Baby and the gingerbread houses, seven coats of texture and paint were used and more than 70m of carved magnified piped icing. The arches that frame each of the six windows along the façade of Myer Melbourne feature 12 rotating carved 1.8m high candy canes and 24 spinning carved peppermint drops. More than 40 artisans over a seven month production season contributed around 17,000 hours of labour to the windows. QR codes will feature on every Christmas window to access behind the scenes video footage. 6 x 56” slim line commercial monitors present each window’s narrated storyboards, synchronised to localised voice over The windows cycle goes through 840 shows per day for 58 days, or 48,720 individual shows for 2013. This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 1982, December 13, 2013.