Barbara Kelly and Howard Tong use the traditional window trimming techniques of the trade and work as an integral part of the practice of Atelier E.B, the collaborative design company set up by Lucy McKenzie and Beca Lipscombe. They are long-time professional window decorators or ‘dressers’ who have worked with numerous major fashion houses and retail stores.

Barbara Kelly

I grew up at the Elephant & Castle in South London, and I first heard about window dressing while doing my Art O-level; so then when I left school at 16 I went to Window Dressing College, which was actually called the College for Distributive Trade. This was the only school at that time in London offering training in window dressing and it actually shared the building with Saint Martins Art School, where Beca Lipscombe studied. It was two years of studying window dressing, all free; the state paid for the whole thing, with lecturers from the industry but also from fine art backgrounds. We studied the history of art, photography, technical drawing, and prop making with a fantastic character called Mike Ozouf, a painter-designer. This course is now called ‘Visual Merchandising’ and it was like a practical commercial art school, but in the very centre of the West End.

Straight out of there, I got a job at the Army & Navy store in Bromley, where I ‘shadowed’ a really brilliant dresser who went off to Harrods. I then managed to get a job with Austin Reed on Regent Street. I had a love for men’s tailoring; I have also worked for Thomas Pink, and we would put tissue up all the sleeves of the suits. Then I went to Selfridges, it was really fantastic to work for them; it was always about an eye for detail but also with major props, you were given a week to spend to do the whole window. I was a long time at Selfridges and then came to

Harvey ‘Nicks’ Nichols as a dresser when Mary Portas took over from Paul Dyson, who was in charge of merchandise presentation and promotion.

I stayed there until 1996 and then went freelance. I have been very busy ever since: you name it, I’ve done it. My first love is still really ‘dressing’, and I will happily spend a full week creating a show window, with electricians to do the lighting, getting fabrics from down on Berwick Street in Soho. I worked with South Korean luxury stores like Lotte long before K-Pop; they used to invite teams over to design their Christmas windows, for two years running. They videoed us, they took photos, they followed everything we did until they’d drained our brains and didn’t need us any longer!

I used to do Woolworth’s, and most recently I have been doing the Christmas displays at Marks & Spencer flagship stores in the West End and in Manchester and Edinburgh. I am there in the window ‘fluffing’ the trees at Christmas; you have to actually get into the artificial ones to make them perfect and end up having ‘Christmas stigmata’ all over your arms, your hands get cut up, and one does get arthritis in the fingers. As far as I know, a window dresser and window ‘trimmer’ are one and the same. This is perhaps an American term as they talk about ‘trimming’ a Christmas tree whereas we say ‘dressing’. I don't think I ever heard the term before the early 90s. I have been doing this a long time and still love it, even though window dressing is very different now than back then: it used to be much more creative, now it is basically just installing the same windows again and again in your ‘territory’.

Howard Tong

I was born in Blackpool in 1954. I attended the Central College of Art and studied fine art; but I was advised to move on to a more open-minded college, Maidstone Art School, which far better suited my interests. Both the tutors and students overall were very open-minded. I was even sent to train with the mime artist Lindsay Kemp thanks to Bob Kane and Adrian Munsey. But it was Marc Camille Chaimowicz who changed my life; as my tutor he showed me everything I was looking for in art school. He introduced me to Performance Art and indulged me in my obsession with shoes, swings, mirrors, and using actual people in performance vignettes in window displays.

Another influential tutor was Anthony Howell, a performance artist who had started the performance group The Ting: Theatre of Mistakes. I joined Anthony along with others: Fiona Templeton, Lindsey Moran, Mickey Greenall, Miranda Payne, and Anita Tong. We did several performances including working with Reindeer Werk and Genesis P-Orridge. I recently did a couple of reunion performances, one at Raven Row Gallery and one at Tate Britain. After art school, I showed my work at The Acme Gallery, including a performance installation called Filtro di Luce with the photographer Richard Rayner-Canham.

After leaving college I found work as a freelance window dresser. It was much easier to get work then; you just walked into a store or shop and asked if they needed their windows dressed. I worked for numerous small independent stores including Anthony Price, Chatters, Rocket, Vivian Westwood, Kensington Market, Matches, Artwork, Nostalgia of Mud, and many more.

I found a more regular job in the newly opened shop called Mulberry. Roger Saul – the owner – gave me almost carte blanche to do anything I liked in the windows. We produced schemes as varied as a burned-out shed with charred mannequins all the way to huge shards of broken glass with ‘V.O.G.U.E.75’ etched on each of them for Vogue’s 75th anniversary.

Following the success of the windows, I began designing and installing international trade-show stands. Again, I was given carte blanche: the schemes ranged from a rowing pavilion – including a full-size scull hanging from the ceiling – to an attic room. The attic was filled with clothes and toys, complete with a real slate roof and skylight you entered through.

I moved from Mulberry to head up the display department at Harvey Nichols. I did several windows for them. The one I remember most fondly is a human-sized Airfix Kit.

After parting ways with Harvey Nichols, I went into partnership with Kathryn Scanlan – with whom I had collaborated on designing Harvey Nicks windows – in setting up KSHT (Kathryn Scanlan Howard Tong). We had a lot of fun. We built trade-show stands, store interiors, and sets for press shows: if it was visual and interested us, we did it.

During my career I had worked many times with Martin McGeown, long before he set up the Cabinet Gallery. He’s a very old friend and through him, I have started to work with Lucy and Beca and Atelier E.B and have started travelling all over again, doing work I love.

The first E.B show at Serpentine was a much simpler shop front back then; we had to improvise with old wood found on site. It has very much evolved: in fact, the whole Atelier E.B project has evolved in the way window dressing developed. We had two windows side-by-side at the Serpentine; then when we did the ‘Jasperware’ collection in 2020 at the Garage in Moscow, we had triple vitrines. With the Hermès exhibition space in Brussels, there was just a single vitrine; then Munich and Vienna, at Meyer Kainer; then Tate Liverpool and the V&A Dundee. There’s definitely a strong connection between art and window dressing: one is always looking at the other, and there is always that barrier of the window itself; we dressers are looking at what the artists are doing and they are looking back, both are very much aligned.