Holiday Windows 2017: Bloomingdale's

Holiday window display season is upon us, and this is my fifth time seeing the windows from Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany. There are other window displays, of course, but these are the big ones that I specifically seek out every year. There is usually a clear standout, but this year I thought all four were as good or even better than previous years' displays. I'll start with my "least" favorite and end with the best—which doesn't really mean much because I enjoyed them all—but up first is Bloomingdale's.

My mom and I usually reserve a weekend day during December or late November to go look at the new windows, and we always start with Bloomingdale's. I've been disappointed in their window displays in the past, and they're usually my least favorite of the bunch. They were a little cartoonish in 2013, all over the place stylistically in 2016 and not impressive or memorable enough for me to photograph in 2014 and 2015. But this year's "Greatest Showman" theme, based on the upcoming P.T. Barnum movie musical is leaps and bounds above anything they've shown in the past five years. 

I love anything that has a carnival, sideshow or old-timey Coney Island feel, and the windows feature scenes from the movie embellished with more than 7,600,000 Swarovski crystals. The windows are full of acrobats, ringmasters and performers of all types. There's even a bearded lady, a tattooed couple, a wolf man and a pair of conjoined twins (made out of what are obviously women mannequins turned into men). 

When my mom got to one window in particular, she called me over and said "you're going to like this one!" I had no idea when I decided to be a Grandmother's Predictions fortune-telling machine for Halloween this year that I would see a variation of my costume show up in a holiday window display (it's not the first time there's been overlap). At the risk of sounding full of myself, I do think mine was better (if only because how do you top a classic like Grandma?), but the fortune I received from the Bloomingdale's version was very apropos.