Holiday Windows 2017: Saks

Over the past five years, Saks Fifth Avenue's holiday windows have been either hit or miss for me. They have a lot of prime real estate to work with and usually the Fifth Avenue windows are holiday focused, while the 50th and 49th Street windows feature more traditional fashion themes. What Saks does best (and something that no other store in New York seems to care much about) is crowd control. Maybe it's because they're located right across the street from the always-hectic Rockefeller Center, but the sidewalks outside of Saks are a nightmare during the holidays.

Luckily, Saks has railings installed (I think they're only up for the holiday windows), which help to funnel window-watchers into a single-file line. I'm not a huge fan of crowds, so I appreciate their attempt to create order and a sense of fairness. This is the first year that Saks didn't have a bouncer (for lack of a better word) directing the line, but it was still more orderly than the chaos that lingers outside of Bergdorf's.

The line to see the windows at Saks wrapped around the side of the store, but it moved quickly and this year's windows are definitely worth the wait. Saks collaborated with Disney to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Each of the 14 windows depicts a different scene from the iconic movie and feature Snow White herself, all seven dwarfs, the evil queen, the witch, the prince and tons of little woodland creatures including chipmunks, bunnies, birds and deer.

Saks has done fairytale-themed windows in the past, but this year's were definitely a step above previous years' designs in terms of scope, cohesiveness and old fashioned holiday magic. I've said it before, but as much as I dislike children, I often find myself drawn to child-like things, and these windows delighted the 12 year old lurking beneath my 32-year-old resting bitch face.

I'm not a rabid Disney fan, but the Saks windows remind me of vintage window displays and they'd be right at home at Main Street of Yesteryear. The figures animate in charming little ways, and they're so cute that there's no need for digital displays or too much technological whizz-bang (Hi, maybe I'm actually 80 years old). Of course they also reminded me of another animated Snow White display—the one of questionable provenance currently at the Magic Forest—and that only made me love these Saks windows even more.