Maybe Bill de Blasio’s right: There are two cities! One is the hard-driving New York we know much of the year — the other is the dreamy place it becomes during the holidays, when twinkling lights and greenery smooth the sharp angles of stony facades, our own jagged edges softened by nostalgia, hope and goodwill. And this year’s displays are among the most brilliant ever.
Look no further than Fifth Avenue, where Tiffany & Co. filled its windows with miniature townhouses, tiny blue boxes piling up everywhere. Tommy Hilfiger’s girdled itself in greenery, Ferragamo boasts a menagerie of silver cats, and Bendel’s is hosting a tea party peopled by 3-D versions of Al Hirschfeld caricatures, including Al himself. The biggest stores have gone further, filling window after window with fresh and, in Barneys’ case, alluringly interactive landscapes. That many stores partner with charities this season is reason enough to salute them. Here’s what’s in store in this wonderful city of lights.
Bloomingdale’s
Lexington Avenue at 59th Street
Theme: “All Wrapped Up”
Draws: It’s a small world after all, and Bloomie’s has it in the bag this year — its signature brown bag, which appears in all of its tableaux. Unfurling like animated postcards are windows on New York (checkered cab — check — plus a crystal-studded Chrysler Building and Miss Liberty); France, with its bejeweled Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and strident poodles; Italy’s leaning Tower of Pisa and gondolier; and Great Britain’s own (if markedly young-looking) Queen Elizabeth II. There’s even China — land of bicycles, pandas and pagodas, and where all those little brown bags probably come from.
Extra Treat: A cross-legged reindeer, umbrella drink in hand, chilling in a gondola paddled by Santa himself.
Barneys
660 Madison Ave. at 61st Street
Theme: “A New York Holiday”
Draws: Barneys dials up the interactive by letting us literally into a window. Actors from the Upright Citizens Brigade are standing by (Monday to Thursday from 1 to 5 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 1 to 7 p.m., Sunday noon to 6 p.m.) to escort you into a souped-up sports car of a sleigh. Another window — covered by what looks like golden, geodesic globe — is actually a kind of small pop-up planetarium. Inside is “The Floating City,” perched on what looks like an iceberg. Add (projected) snowflakes, New Age-y music and a soundtrack supplied by elderly kibitzers — “What is that? A spaceship?” “Will it move?” — and you’ve got your own Woody Allen movie.
Extra Treat: The linebacker-sized security guy stationed outside the planetarium, which gives the whole thing some VIP club cachet.
Bergdorf Goodman
754 Fifth Ave. at 58th Street
Theme: “Holidays on Ice“
Draws: Why confine yourself to just one holiday when you can have designs on a dozen? So the thinking goes here, and it’s delightful — with crystalline interpretations of one great day after another. Take your time to drink in the delicious details of a Goth Halloween, replete with a bejeweled spider web; icy cakes and pastries for Valentine’s Day and a topsy-turvy April Fool’s that puts a gal in Alexander McQueen on her head. There’s even a hauntingly beautiful shoutout to Arbor Day. Yes, the geniuses at BG haven’t forgotten our annual salute to the tree.
Extra Treat: “Groundhog Day,” with what looks like a paparazzi flying squirrel aiming his camera at a rodent admiring — not his shadow — but a Marchesa clutch.
Macy’s
34th Street at Herald Square
Theme: “Dream … and Believe”
Draws: “What is real?” reads the text in one window. “What is a dream? What does it matter at this time of year?” How true. Here we follow a sleeping boy’s journey into a winter wonderland filled with crystalline bears and fairies with fluttering wings. “Look, it’s Tinkerbell!” one small bystander declared. “And that’s her sister!” Don’t miss the lovely projections in each window: One scenario has a fairy leaving a pretty little package for a wolf who sniffs it, picks it up and disappears, presumably home to the cubs.
Extra Treat: The final window finds the boy back in bed, a pair of small red slippers on the floor. Doors slide open to reveal a tree and, on a table nearby, milk and cookies alongside a scribbled note, “For Santa.”
Lord & Taylor
424 Fifth Ave. at 38th Street
Theme: “Vintage New York During the Holidays”
Draws: “Delightfully romantic!” one window-gazer said with a sigh. Amen. This year, L&T eschewed its meticulously detailed miniature tableaux for a bold, Monty Python-esque display of Victorian-looking moving parts. A giant Santa helps himself to cocoa in one window, while in another, jazz musicians glide in and out, even though the sound-system’s heavy on the Tchaikovsky. Planes, trains, automobiles — and even a hot-air balloon — fill another window, along with a newsreel of an old-timey New York traffic jam. Apparently, some things never change.
Extra Treat: The small windows in-between the large ones, where the merchandise is artfully arranged amid some terrific-looking taxidermy. (Somebody’s been taking lessons from Bergdorf’s!)
Saks Fifth Avenue
611 Fifth Ave., at 49th Street
Theme: “The Yeti Story”
Draws: Laser light shows are so 2012! This year, 3-D video mapping will make Saks’ facade come to life every night from dusk on. (Best viewing point is right across the street, at Rock Center.) Six animated windows, unveiling Monday, trace the journey of a Yeti — born Yetakovsky — a disheartened snowflake maker who leaves Russia for New York. Along the way, the Yeti takes the subway in from Queens, giving the clever window dressers a chance to have a little adult fun: Check out those posters!
Extra Treat: Live music by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City and violinist Joshua Bell at the official unveiling Monday night at 6:30.