The jewelry icon Tiffany & Co. hired Gene Moore as its Artistic Director and window designer, seeing the storefront as the first opportunity to “spread the Tiffany magic.” Moore became known for his use of incongruous objects to showcase the incredible jewels, juxtaposing diamonds and emeralds among keys, bricks, broken glass and metals.
Always in his displays, Moore would include some imperfection: a key placed upside down, a knife turned backward in the place setting or something else out of kilter. He would receive phone calls about the “mistake” which he used as an informal poll about the window’s effectiveness. “It was the only way I could check to see if people were watching,” he said in the documentary Crazy About Tiffany’s.
Moore was creative not only in his display work but in his measurements. It may not have been scientific but the intentional misplacement of items worked to provide him with some feedback to indicate the intensity by which his windows were being viewed. Take a lesson from Moore and think outside the (iconic blue!) box to gauge the response to your efforts.
Crazy About Tiffany’s, 2016, on Hulu
