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Myer Christmas Windows

Each Christmas in Melbourne brings a shop window display at Myer's southern frontage in the Bourke Street Mall. First held in 1956, the windows have become an institution of Melbourne Christmas. They were the brainchild of Fred Asmussen, who had been in charge of dressing the Bourke Street windows from 1939. The windows have an appeal across generations, as parents and grandparents, remembering trips to the windows in their childhood, continue the tradition with their own children. Bringing to life popular stories and Christmas themes through the use of innovative lighting, costumes and mechanisation, the windows follow in the tradition of a variety of moving window displays (for example, the tapping man). The scenes begin in the menswear window by the General Post Office. Asmussen's last window was The Butterfly Ball in 1974.

Andrew May

References

Lawson-Black, Pat, Making magic: Forty years of fun: the Myer Christmas Windows, Myer Stores Limited, Melbourne, 1996. Details