The Suffragets used yellow as a positive colour signifier, as well as other visual design guidelines such as repetition, props and graphics. Shop keepers were given reign over the merchandise and stock featured in displays, as well as creatively, however the suffragettes always relayed the intent of their intentions, which needed to be communicated as clearly as possible.
“Window cards making prices and proclaining quality were hand-lettered cards supporting women’s sufferage and copies of an elegant poster”(fig 6.1)
‘This campaign pioneered or expanded the use of many tactics of visibility, including advertising posters.’ (p.89)
As well as the window storm as a secondary tool, they “[constantly] distributed leaflets on the sidewalk in front of the store, day and evening until 9pm” (p.91)
“The most prominent piece of suffrage advertising, a blazing “large, permanent, electric sign” reading “Votes for Women”.
British suffragettes used connected shop fronts as “offices, decorating their windows with suffrage posters and books” “British suffragettes also convinced shops to display clothing and accessories in the British suffrage colours, purple, white, and green, in preparation for a Hyde Park march in 1909”. When ‘retail mix’ all works perfectly, instant recognisability is acknowledged by the public.
Californian suffragettes followed British example in their poster campaigns, featuring in many store windows in San Fransisco at the time. They “printed some posters on yellow paper”, highlighting the public recognition between all forms of marketing and branding collateral.
Show windows effect “the space of the sidewalk” it “most explicitly engaged the commercial nature of this landscape” effortlessly, relaying on basic human intuition rather than modern day market analysis.
“decorated their windows in suffrage colours, the milliners and the dry foods by hats and goods of our colour, the stationer’s by filling the window with suffrage books and periodicals” shows the collaborative, ‘for the people’ nature which went into these displays. A community of stores would gather and come to aid, all in the support of Votes for Women. The tool of a window could of been anything- billboards, posters or marches, but the tangible nature of fashion it is possible for everyone to contribute to the outcome at some level. This was window dressing on a improvisation level under the clear artistic direction of the suffragettes, who knows what tuition from schools like Reimann would have done to increase voting rates?.
‘They gained access to their stores windows through social connections and purchasing power.’ (p.91) Men owned the stores, yet they were generally ran by women. By shop workers contributing to the positive success of women rights, it was also a rebellion against their own employer. Windows in this sense encourage a wise for equality and peace, rebelling against society as discussed in Miss Addams “Newer Ideals of Peace” (p.91)[25]
‘For store owners, promoting sufferage in their window displays simply continued a policy of accommodating female consumers’. ‘It was also a way of attracting middle-class women’ into their stores, further competing with stores which did not have such displays. (p.92).
Windows are just one method of modern marketing and communication, with the intention to entertain and engage.
The use of pro-sufferage advertising was a very popular selling tool through advertising, with societal marches and community groups set up in active support. There was an uprising through windows and shop owners willingly aligned with them to further increase profits and social reputation.
‘The use of a single colour and the repetition of the Votes for Women poster’ (p.92)
Colour was one of the early rules of window dressing
‘The official report of the committee on design write that “the psychology of advertising teaches us to repeat, with slight variations, a familiar design until the public eye is caught by the manifold repetitions of the same arresting idea’. (p.92)[32]
Major display strategy in this era was repetition- did this stem from Paris or NYC??
“Model windows after model window was organised entirely out of handkerchiefs, shoes, canned goods, or other commodities, arranged to create a striking visual effect” (p.93)
Yellow was used as a suffrage colour in the US since 1887 and he use of multiple props, objects, graphics and wall decor all in the same colour but different shades suggest an “abundance through a variety” and excessive, almost theatrical way.
Poster was displayed in the window, balanced with ‘yellow goods’ which ‘marked the display of the goods as part of a political display as well as a commercial one’. (p.93)
The of repetitive colour stems from New York Store ‘Greenhut’s. Historian William Leach discusses the 1907 arrangement of “carpets, side walls, stool seats and desk blotters wore different shades of green; window back-grounds were green velvet, and the store attendants dressed in green; there were green stationary, green stock boxes and wrapping paper, green string, even green ink and green ribbon for the green store type-writers.” (p.93)[34], which proved to be an effective commercial marketing tool in windows.
“The ambiguous status of show windows is visible not only in their use as a forum for speaking to passers by through display and window cards but also in the design of the windows themselves”. (p.93)
By the Suffraget campaign in 1911 “show windows were visually and in many ways physically, separate to the interior of the store.” and the incorporation of other early techniques such as the “use of a background screening the window so that displays could appeal directly” as a “[draw into] the store.” (p.93). The use of a background is another tool in transporting you away from the pavement you are stood on, and into a utopic idealistic land- or perhaps a different part of the world through a truly immersive photograph.
Advertisements were influenced by the consumer relationship with windows at the time, “More than one advertisement showed immaterial window glass pierced by giant hands reaching out to grab customers on the sidewalk”.(p.93) One can question, if the consumers were aware of the capitalist intentions window displays are often based upon, why did the consumer still give them so much power? As history went on the art of window dressing merged into other subjects, such as graphic design etc..
Tricks like lighting were considered in 1911 way before modern technology was readily available, whilst window dressers today are still learning new techniques to better that of the past.
“lighting was carefully planned to minimise glare while fully illuminating the goods in the window”. (p.93-94)
‘According to a 1914 article for shopkeepers, a clear window served as “the oasis in the desert and will attract the passer-by. In contract, a “frosted window is worse than having no window at all” as it is negatively communicating the accessibility and quality of the brand. To solve the problem of fogging “air circulation made it one (p.94) with the outside”, perhaps unknowingly the problem was being “designed out”, much like the axe’s in Sweeden. Designing out the problem is essentially what traditional graphic design is.
“blurring the lines between interior and exterior” (p.94)
“However, for male window viewers suffrage windows also implied that the prominent business-men who owned the stores supported womens suffrage, making it a political position worth taking”. Taking political revolutionary movements to the capitalist controlled socialist streets.
“conventional use as a space of (commercial) speech to passerby” (p.94)
“By using the windows for public speech, suffrages tipped the balance in favour of the public sidewalk.” (p.94)
“By exploiting the power of consumers, suffragists redefined the windows, making them not only a space of commercial display but also a space for [powerful] political speech”. (p.94)
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