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Want to feel excited like a child? Just take a few days off and travel to Europe’s most glamourous metropolises. That’s what I did when I was invited to a book presentation into the Louvre the other day. 5 hours in Paris? What do you do? Watching, observing, inhaling the place.

So I strolled alongside the windows of the fancy Printemps and Lafayette department store. A blinking, glittering light installation that first attraced my eye soon nearly caused my absorption capacity to block. The windows of the elegant store were shrouded by a sound layer that allured the attention of everybody walking by.   

What made even me press my nose against the window and feel like many of the 3 to 5 year olds that stood there, amazed, bewildered and impressed, were the artistically moving installations, curated by the usual but admirable suspects of the fashion and art industry.  Karl Lagerfeld who designed a window for Chanel featured a fantasy troupe of articulated Coco puppets in Chanel outfit which were flying through a garden of golden flowers.

Another window by Hannah MacGibbon who represents Chloé featured a world of underwater bears.

A few windows further on, passing the department store Lafayette, this tree seemed to have come alive. The children who the department store had organised special ramps for, stood there, surprisingly quiet and the only sound you could hear, was: ‘ah’, ‘oh’ and ‘wow’.

I always wonder why the shops in other cities don’t use this high grade promotional stage. Is low budget the perseverative excuse or maybe just a decoration team that lacks the spirit of a creative mind?

I just walked by this piece of water stencil on a busy shopping street in Vienna. Not a bad link to ‘green’ electricity company OEKOSTROM. Although I quite like the idea not to use colour to spray messages on floors and walls, I guess it is easier to paint over a piece of design than to dirty a clean piece of street to get rid of the message.