WordSmith: Window-dressing wonders
Gerard Smith takes us back to a time when the Eason Cavan window display was like the Brown Thomas reveal in Dublin!
In London the festive event of the year is the reveal of the Fortnum & Mason Christmas windows. They draw such a crowd that it’s often hard to catch a glimpse. The offices of my first London job were close to the queen’s supermarket, and often at lunchtime I’d go to their sumptuous food hall to feast on curious cheeses, pickles and pates, breads of all kinds dipped in exotic oils and slathered in speciality spreads. I dined like a royal on the rich array of taste-testers on offer. Until I was rumbled by a keen-eyed deli-man who spotted the frequent freeloader and ran me from any further free-lunches (I was an early adopter of the Cavan man stereotype).
My first Christmas back in Cavan I was ambling up main street when I was halted by Eason Newsagents (the shop no longer has the plural ‘S’). I gazed through the window at a display that had all the charm and festive warmth of Fortnum’s. And though the scale was obviously smaller, the breadth of creativity and design detail were as big as the London store’s.
It was a display that kept me coming back, finding something new to delight in each time. What’s more, that window became a conversation starter, “I loved the Bunty Annual at Christmas,” said a woman, who stopped to admire the array of vintage annuals on display. I nodded, “Yep, it was my sister’s favourite, too,” I said, wistfully recalling reading it with Maria in her room on Christmas nights’ past (having devoured my Dandy before Christmas dinner).
At the time, I didn’t know who designed the window, but what I knew for sure was that people always stopped; even those in a hurry couldn’t pass without a pause.
Then along came my post-Christmas sorry song, “January, sick and tired you’ve been hanging on me…” January and I have a bad relationship. I’ve tried my hardest to build a tentative friendship; but no, that month and me loathe each other. That year as January and I finally called it a day, I found love again – in the Eason window. Cupid’s arrow caught my eye and drew me into a scene bursting with heart filled love and creativity for Valentine’s Day. I went into the shop and asked, “Who designs your window displays?” I was delighted to discover the designer was Catriona O’Brien, a woman I know. The local franchise for the book shop is now back with Eason HQ, and as such the local element is no more in store (such a loss to the town). Hence, any further window branding is supplied by Corporate HQ. I was privileged to assist Catriona in the creation of her final Christmas display back in 2021. We worked well together. We’re both ‘spontaneous-creatives’ and I was happy to take her lead and eye for detail as the window display developed. The resultant design was a warm Christmas morning room, festooned with open presents and a roaring fire centrepiece. It prompted one social commentator to pronounce, “It’s their best yet.” It was a fittingly festive finale to Catriona’s window displays, which have delighted generations of Cavan people over the years.
Working with Catriona made me lament a little. For had I took a different path and stayed in Cavan, I considered that Catriona and I could’ve made a great couple. As a design team, we would’ve been a marriage made in creative heaven, perhaps?
Which sweeps me back to my first column for this newspaper; wherein I wrote about my father finding my teenage sketchbook filled with wedding dress designs. You see, Catriona, like her mother before her, was a seamstress who created and made wedding dresses for generations of Cavan brides (plus debs dresses et al). I loved listening to Catriona’s tales of her dress making days as we worked on the windows.
Today, all the trials, tribulations and bridal-back-story of the wedding dress make for TV Gold on shows like ‘Say Yes to The Dress.’ And I’ve no doubt Catriona’s back catalogue of wedding dresses are full of her-story. A story full of Cavan’s: social, fashion and design history. There must be decades of Catriona’s dresses featured in Wedding Albums all over the county. Pictures and stories that would make a great exhibition – one I’d love to see curated: ‘A window on wedding and other dresses.’ Perhaps?
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