Sak's "The Snowflake and the Bubble" Light Show

I hope everyone who celebrates the holiday had a wonderful Christmas! New York City is now in the midst of a snowstorm which is turning quickly into a blizzard, so it is ironic that the first set of holiday department store displays that I'll be showing are the iconic snowflake themed ones of the light show on Saks Fifth Avenue department store, located at 611 Fifth Avenue (at 49th Street) in Manhattan. (All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them once, and then again when they reopen on a new page.)

As you can see in my short video below, the snowflakes this year are projected onto the building in the evening hours from 5PM until 10:30 PM during the Christmas season. They twist and turn in 3D:

Every fifteen minutes in the evening there is a spectacular holiday light show that brings the building to life with music, bubbles and snowflakes!

Called "The Snowflake and the Bubble," the 3D light projection show on the outside of the department store is absolutely amazing!  The show tells a festive tale of how Snowflakes and Bubbles struggle to live in harmony, before eventually coming together in the spirit of the holiday season.

You can watch the entire two minute show on this high quality video -- don't miss it!

Wasn't that beautiful? The light show and original music will run for six weeks, until January 6th, 2010.

As you can see in the photo above, Saks front windows are also specially decorated for the holidays, and crowds of New Yorkers and tourists line up to walk by them and enjoy their displays. Saks estimates nearly a million people a day will walk by the holiday windows this season, versus the 400,000 to 500,000 that walk by on a regular day.

I visited them both day (photo above) and in the evening, but the evening windows were easier to see as there were less reflections from the street.  The theme this year is that of a little girl named Annabelle, who is seen above blowing bubbles, who has a dream inspired by the objects that are in the cabinet behind her. Her dream magically comes to life!

The photo mosaics above and below show the progression of the dream in each of the store windows. There is something in motion in almost every window -- you can watch some of the animation and learn more about the dispaly on this link.

As you can see, many of Annabelle's magical dream sequences contain both the objects that were in the cabinet behind her in the first photo, and also bubbles, and one of a kind fashions by Proenza Schouler, Oscar de la Renta and Alexander McQueen.

A equally spectacular sight is directly across the street from Saks, as there in the distance was the Rockefeller Christmas tree!  If you haven't seen my blog post about this beautiful tree as yet, click here to read more.

My next post will show the very colorful Macy's of Herald Square's holiday store windows and some more sights of Christmas in New York so please come back soon!