We’ve been changing our window displays at our Burlington, NJ
location, Steins at Sunset Florist, pretty regularly recently. Before we’d only
redesign them for the major holidays, but one of our recent purchases has
inspired a lot of window flipping lately. It’s a simple dress form. 
The ladies at Steins at Sunset Florist love fashion… and what girl
doesn’t enjoy playing dress up? So we style our coworker Jessi Rose from time
to time to showcase our latest floral creations, usually playing the role of
bride, in old prom dresses, colorful makeup and the like. She was even our live
model at The Philadelphia Great Bridal Expo back in January 2012. She was the
perfect stoic statue atop a pedestal, displaying our beautiful bridal
creations; more than a few expo guests touched her arm to see if she was real,
followed by a quick and embarrassed “I’m sorry.”
Unfortunately, being a human girl, Jessi Rose can’t stand in our
store windows 24/7, so our dress form is one of our new favorite things! We get
to play dress up and make fun themed displays at the same time.
Before we dove into an all-out themed vignette, we dressed our
dummy in flowers and sewing notions. One of our employees took the dress form
home before it even made it to the flower shop and decked it in fabric swatches,
vintage buttons and pins, a tape measure, spools of thread and fresh yellow
tulips. There was really no reason behind it… we just love playing dress up! This
began our dress form love affair.
Prom season was our first display. A puffy pink princess dress with
bold floral accents and long streamers of ribbon. We added the turquoise
accents to the Jessica McClintock dress ourselves, sewing corset-style lacing at
the back for extra drama. 
For the display we pulled in elements of a teenage
girl’s bedroom getting ready for her prom date, so we included a mirror with
her prom tickets and flower order receipt tucked into the frame, her clutch
bouquet on a side table and a pair of high heels kicked over to the side.
Next was graduation season. One of our employees is a graduate of
Drexel University, so we had a pretty decent cap, gown and stole. We added an
overly dramatic set of tassels (‘cause we love honors) and finished our display
with text books, globes, and flowers (of course). You can see more about this
display in our post Congratulations Class of 2012.
Then there was Independence Day (we blogged about it in Hooray forthe USA). We added a red, white and blue sash and a big bow to the back of a simple
white sun dress (so Sailor Moon *smirk*). A couple of red necklaces, a patriotic corsage and a pocket
full of flags and our dummy was ready to party! Our live model Jessi Rose even
dressed herself to match the mannequin for the holiday, it was adorable.
Our current display has a tropical theme for the Summer. With a
sparkly seashell top, a colorful lei, and hippy hula skirt our dress form is
ready for a luau. We finished our vignette with pretty Polynesian accents,
colorful tropical flowers and happy tin fish. More than a few customers have
commented on our exotic Summer theme, they really seem to like it and we’re
happy to bring a bit of the tropics to Burlington, NJ.
We haven’t planned our next window display yet… but we can hardly
wait to play dress up again!
