Much like those industrious elves up north, our designers have all been pitching in to get our windows ready for the holiday season.  Over the past couple of months, we’ve been gathering used materials like plastic bottles, newspapers, old twigs, and bottle caps, and finding discarded material around Brooklyn to build an “upcycled” set for our winter forest photoshoot. The set ultimately will be transported to our store windows in time for the holidays.

Plastic bottles turn into falling snow, and their caps into deer skin.

Found carboard pipes turn into spooky forest ground covering.

Recently, we got our hands on the documentary Wasteland, about the Brazilian and Brooklyn-based, modern artist Vik Muniz, and the scavengers collecting recyclable goods from a massive 321-acre landfill near Rio de Janeiro. Working with the collectors, Muniz repurposed scavenged landfill trash into large-scale mosaic pieces and photographs.

Watching the documentary while we’ve been finishing up the set has served as great inspiration to find more ways to creatively use discarded goods. As Muniz once said, “The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.”