Displays for Salvation Army

We are helping to design the new Salvation Army Select store. We are the creative minds, putting the finishing touches on it. This means that we get the joy of doing the displays within the store. The "bones" of the store has already been designed. Our retail design class gets to be the creative source that breathes life into the space. We get to give the customers the warm fuzzy feeling that is so often felt when one gets to reinvent themselves by buying new (or in this case, gently used) clothes. I think most of us are leaning towards the displays having a boutiquey, vintage feel--a classy and antique touch. On our field trip to Anthropologie, one of the display fixtures they had was this table with a smoked and tarnished mirror as one of its surfaces. Its flawed surface caught my eye. The fact that it was hard to make out images in it, and the way the light was softly distorted in it--well, lets just say that I desperately want to use tarnished mirrors somewhere in the store. I think its a beautiful material to work with. I imagine the image above to be on the wall in front of the dressing rooms. Right now it is just blank, and there needs to be something there. Also, it is quite dark back there, so having a reflective surface would help brighten up the space.
The display above that I have designed also incorporates the tarnished mirror circles. I used my walk through greensboro as inspiration for this. It had rained earlier that day and I noticed lots of leaves. The mirrors, along with the leather straps that hang mimic the shape of a raindrop. There is also leaves and moss/fake grass placed under the mannequins, giving the space an outdoorsy feeling. Also, placed within the leaves are some red shoes that we have been collecting/painting to incorporate our guerrilla marketing strategy. I like the idea of having a two mock walls behind the platform. This gives us as designers more to work with space-wise. Also, I have designed my own platform, just for the sake of my display areas. I think this one works well because it subtle enough to be very versatile, yet still goes with the rest of the fixtures in the store because of its white paint, and rectangular reveal that pierces through it on all sides.

I decided that this display would be up around back-to-school season. Many old, leather bound books would be stacked around, with our red shoes, sitting strategically on the stacks and platform. This, to me, has a vintage and sophisticated feel--a feeling I adore.