The opening scene of Breakfast At Tiffany’s – in which Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy-clad Holly Golightly steps out of a yellow cab on New York’s Fifth Avenue and peruses the Tiffany & Co. window, longing for the diamonds she sees inside – has gone down in cinematic history. “The windows are nearly another character in the film,” says Christopher Young, vice president and creative director of creative visual merchandising at Tiffany & Co.
and the Tiffany archives. “She’s still in last night’s clothes as she opens the door of her taxi and comes to the store to look into the window. That’s when the credits begin, and that’s when her dream begins.
” Now, the dream is reignited. To celebrate the launch of the new Tiffany store in Selfridges, the iconic jewellery house has taken over 13 of the landmark London department store’s windows, and illuminated the building’s facade in that unmistakable shade of Tiffany blue. While the Tiffany X Selfridges window-gazing experience is not too far from the one embedded in movie fans’ memories, “a part of the role of a store window,” says Young, “is to show the world something that they’ve never seen before”.
Hence the brand has collaborated with four British artists – Damien Hirst, Rana Begum, James Righton and Jason Bruges – to create site-specific window installations inspired by the Tiffany archives – a repository of over 5,000 objects, encompassing window displays and jewellery pieces and iconic.