vienna

The occasion for the death of a store is related to its
decoration strategy, which intuitively has a bigger visual impact
than all kinds of decorations attempted during the life of a store.
This phenomenon still holds true today. Dying shops stand out
of the mass, which is why the strategies of beauty are not longer
used. Instead of an adequately restrained design, liminal design
strategies are used to make the shop stand out, which, according
to what we have heard, is often for the first time in its life. The
dramatisation of death is a strategy of passage rites as well:
making visible someone’s departure from an old life so that they
can become part of a new social reality after symbolic rebirth.
The aesthetic practices during the seasonal sale bear a striking
resemblance to similar dramatisations performed on the death
of a store. Another evidence for this is the fact that even the
economic target is the same: away with everything. Thus,
staging the death of the store can be one option for theorising
the aesthetic appearance of seasonal sale windows. Parallel
to this we will also try to see how an aesthetic practice can be
developed along the concept of liminal design. Liminal design
articulates the ugly; it is antithetical to the beautiful design of
show windows. So what should stores look like today?
“A store must stand out, attract and seduce and then carry out
its promise with true personality.” 160
The distinct personality of the store is a key value. But
during the sales, this rule seems to go up in smoke. There is a
strange uniformity in the way the stores of shopping streets
dramatise their sales. We can almost compare this dramatisation
to a state of communitas, where all shops are temporarily in a
state of equality and anti-structure. The nice individual window
dressings are stopped for the time being and replaced by the
aesthetics of commercial death. Profane is related to beautiful,
and sacred to ugly. The store attains its truly sacred state during
the sales. Other celebrations of consumer rites, like Christmas,
employ condensed symbols to indicate their sacredness. These
elaborate codes are used to indicate the hallowed time within
the aesthetic economy of beauty. In contrast, the seasonal sales
use a mixture of condensed and diffuse symbols. 161 Condensed
symbols are conscious and recognising them is an acquired
160 Tongeren (2003:30).
161 See Wiedenmann (1991:129) for the relation of symbols and ritual.
The
Death
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