Macy's State Street Cost Cuts Christmas

I'll cut to the chase: Macy's State Street has cost-cut its Chicago Loop holiday windows and Christmas tree so deeply this year, I personally don't believe it's worth bothering to make that time-honored family foray downtown to see them.

In January 2008, Macy's fired longtime window dresser Amy Meadows, the woman responsible for decorating 25 years worth of State Street holiday windows and Walnut Room Great Trees, as part of a particularly brutal wave of cost-cutting layoffs at the retailer's Chicagoland stores. When it happened, the Sun-Times quoted a Macy's spokesperson saying, "We have a talented visual team who will decorate our store windows and continue the time-honored tradition."

Given the former-Federated's track record in Chicago, I doubted those words. And if this holiday season's State Street windows and Great Tree, publicly unveiled on Saturday, November 8th, are any indication, I had good reason for pause.

I've said it, I've repeated it, and I've even ended up on the front page of the Chicago Tribune business section saying it: Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren will go to the grave--and take the former Marshall Fields with him--before he and his team get a clue about how to honor Chicagoans and their local retail traditions.

The first two years of State Street holiday decorations under Lundgren's tenure were an uneven affair, but at least there was evidence of an artistic program, not to mention a budget. The 2006 season gave us Cinderella windows and a Swarovski crystal-festooned tree. The following season brought a Mary Poppins storyline and a tree decorated by Martha Stewart.

What a difference another 12 months make. The decorations for this year's windows and tree were "inspired" by celebrity designer Tommy Hilfiger around a clumsy one-word theme of "Believe." Abject disbelief is closer to the feeling I was left with upon experiencing them, not to mention more than a little suspicion that Hilfiger's hands went nowhere near a drawing board here.

The first thing I can tell you about the holiday windows is that there are fewer of them. The animated scenes do not even make it across the entire State Street frontage. The dressed windows are interrupted at the Randolph corner by an uninspired collection of toy piles more akin to a retail endcap than a historic holiday window.

At the Washington corner, things get even worse: adult mannequins sporting fashion clothing, perfect for deflating the holiday interest of any Windy City child.

I'd love to tell you the storyline of the windows that do exist. However, I couldn't decipher one. They seem to be an abbreviated series of vignettes about grotesque toys that come to life in some way.

What way or why I couldn't figure. Not that there's much life to speak of. In an obvious attempt to try to sell the Christmas-shopping public on doing more with less, this year's holiday windows have fewer moving parts and more garish blinking lights--for some indecipherable reason, frequently hidden inside semi-transparent vacuum cleaner-esque hoses and tubes.

At first glance, things are more festive upstairs at the 7th-floor Walnut Room. This year marks the 101st anniversary of the two-story tall Great Tree, set in the center of the hoary old restaurant's main room. Last year, the store didn't bother to decorate behind the embarrassingly cheesy cardboard cutout of a town set at the bottom of the tree, giving hordes of shoppers on the 8th-floor gallery above a clear view of wires, duct tape, and scuffed flooring.

This year, to its credit, Macy's has placed actual, three-dimensional boxes and F.A.O. Schwarz-branded toys all the way under and around the tree, completing the holiday illusion for viewers from any angle. However, that improved view is of a surprisingly nondescript tree. Aside from the aforementioned toys, nothing is to be found bedecking the tree more interesting than inexpensive twinkle lights, cloth ornaments, and garland. The bling of years past is nowhere to be seen.

And the sum of all of that is a shame. After the cost cuts in January, Macy's made a very public attempt to try and heal the retail wounds it had wrought in Chicago over the previous two years since taking ownership of the former Marshall Field's by narrow-marketing to local consumers.

Speaking as one of those local consumers, not to mention a downtown resident (I live steps up State Street from the store) and a former New Yorker who before moving to Lake Michigan shores would otherwise have had no axe to grind with Macy's, Lundgren's retail empire has blown it big time this holiday season in the heart of Chicago.

If this is the best Macy's can do after almost three years of ire, perceived insult, and frankly disappointment from Windy City shoppers, something is very wrong at Lundgren's shop. Starting at the top, and finishing with a heart-breaking holiday thud on the State Street pavement.

Comments

[Roelof]

Macy's -- and anything else New York, and yes that means you Donald Trump -- is just so clueless when it comes to Chicago. Just as the Loop takes off in two directions -- with super-luxe high rises popping up around Millennium and Grant Parks from Randolph down to Roosevelt and with tens of thousands of edgy students enrolled in art, design, fashion, photography and video programs at colleges and schools up and down Michigan, Wabash and State -- Macy's buys Field's and takes it down-market with its bland, boring and predictable merchandise. Target had just started to see some success transferring its hipness to the State Street store and Macy's completely squandered that momentum. Idiots. Complete idiots. And you, La Donald, could you possibly have found any cheaper looking material for your Trump Tower on the river? What did you use, recycled clamshell packaging? Such a shame because otherwise it would be a fantastic building. Now when out-of-towners ask about the new building in the skyline, they get the response "oh that" from us.

[mnusser]

Umm...can I say without fear of death that I totally disagree? Those freakish, skinny bleach-white dolls that the previous designer prefered were scary. Furthermore they often seemed linked to Disney's corporate interests (Mary Poppins windows running simultaneously with Disney's Mary Poppins musical"shocker!). C'mon people, change isn't always bad"don't hate Macy's for buying what Target treated like garbage. While the windows aren't exactly great this year, I think they're a step in the right direction.

[naschkatze]

Macy's imposing their name over Marshall Fields is one of the reasons we former Chicagolanders just can't bring ourselves back for one final nostalgic visit. Maybe if the situation gets reversed.

[reasonshouldrule]

Macy's has been a disappointment in almost every category. I had had a Field's card since 1968, but a year ago, I cut up my Macy's card and simply do not shop there anymore.

[RebeccaK]

I just got back from looking at the windows and was completely confused! I'm so glad I'm not alone. I work on State St. and my coworkers and I didn't like the windows at all. And we went inside to peak at the tree--and I liked that better than the windows.

I didn't grow up here and Field's was never a family tradition for me and even I noticed how bad it is this year!

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

Rebecca, I'm glad it's not just me, too. You look at these windows and try to like them, figure them out, or find some silver lining in them. Truly, they just suck.

I used to teach grammar, I assure you that's the correct word here!

[DuPageDem]

Macy's is dead to me, and every native Chicagoan, since they killed Field's. They can't close up and go away soon enough.

[ChiGuy]

What a wonderful tradition it used to be when my aunts, uncles, and cousins from Wisconsin came down during the season and we all went down to see the windows, and have lunch in the Walnut Room.

One of those cousins that now lives in NYC, having heard me express my ire over the change a few years ago, wondered what the big deal was.
I asked him how New Yorkers would have reacted had the name change gone the other way and all the Macy's stores there had been renamed and re-merchandised as Marshall Field's. He got my point.

Field's was as much a part of the history and fabric of Chicago as Macy's is to New York.

I haven't set foot in one of those stores since the cursive green logo came down, and it really wouldn't have mattered if they dumped gobs of money into PR and Christmas displays. They'll never see a dime from me.

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

I still can't get over how incredibly penny wise and pound foolish Macy's is being this Christmas. An additional injury I did not include in the article, there is also no music accompanying the windows this year, in stark contrast to the-ending fairytale soundtrack of the past two years.

Usonian: I usually rebut Macy's idea that the shopping public cares that they are everywhere this way: when was the last time you decided where to go on vacation because a retail store was there?

The only people who care about Macy's are the people who live in the cities where the store is located. They, like Chicagoans, want to know what Macy's is doing for their communities, not for cities across the country.

[Eric8869]

I cancelled my Marshall Fields card when it became a Macys card. They stink.

[OldSkooler]

Matters not to me. When Macy's took over Marshall Field's, I swore I'd never set foot in a Federated Department Store again - and I haven't. Haven't shopped them online, either.

I'm one of those who rode the el down with my Grandma and Grandpa to look at the Marshall Field windows, who shopped there for school clothes each Fall, and felt all grown up to go lunch in the Walnut Room with my Mom and other female relatives. every Christmas. My first credit card was a Field's card, and I did my time in retail hell as a clerk there on school vacations and while looking for a "real job" right after graduation from college (20% employee discount! whoo!). I never stepped into the State Street store without getting just a little frisson of sentimental nostalgia - for a store! Crazy, I know. But there you are.

So: Sorry, Macy's. I avert my eyes even when passing a Macy's store. You blew it, and your foolish nationalization/homogenization of what were beloved regional identities is blowing up in your face.

Christmas windows, Schmismas windows.

[Mysticalsister]

Macy's isn't Macy's anymore. It used to be our go-to place for shopping (less pricy than Nordstrom's, but nearly as stylish) -- now, it's Nordstom or nothing (and in this economy, it's usually nothing). Now, if I walk through Macy's, it's because I'm buying towels or a toaster oven -- or it's because that's the side of the mall I parked on. Why these big corporations buy up the retail giants is anybodies guess. The first thing they do is wreck them, and the second thing they do is go out of business.

How many time do they have to repeat this formula before they figure out that it doesn't pay off?

[UsonianBear]

I feared this would happen. I am also a little hesitant to say "Macy's". Macy's hasn't existed since it was purchased by the Cincinnati based Federated Department Stores in 1994. Federated is an uninspired conglomerate who has been gobbling up failing regional chains for close to two decades and has been contributing to the great "mono-toning" of the US retail landscape.

Federated is good at earning money for stockholders, not at sustaining inspired, regional retail. They changed their name in 2007 to Macy's, hoping to cash-in on the historic New York retailer's genuine brand credentials. Their underlying (and somewhat arrogant) thinking is that in our "great mobile society" people want the same store experience from coast to coast. In other words, running things like McDonalds. While this certainly does lend an economy of scale to the bottom line, you are left with a blanched, ghost-like brand devoid of any true personality.

While you could argue that this is the way to run retail in today's world, I can't believe it is sustainable over the long haul. My personal feeling is that you will see a backlash against this "corporate" blanding of our shopping experience. Consumers will slowly return to regional and ma & pop establishments in search of something "real".

Rest in peace Marshall Fields. I for one will be doing all my Christmas shopping at locally owned stores, helping build the next wave of truly great, local stores.

[jasmined]

That tree makes me sad. 'Miracle on 34th Street' won't seem the same.