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All my life I’ve adored department store window displays and no-one does it better than Harvey Nicholls and Selfridges for wit and charm fused with high fashion on display in their front windows…

All my life I’ve adored department store window displays.

In my experience, no-one does it better than Harvey Nicholls and Selfridges for wit and charm fused with high fashion on display in their front windows.

Here’s a peek at the two London legends’ window displays in July 2010.

Harvey Nicholls creates life-sized objects from stationery items in themes, with wooden yellow pencils to build the tree whence they come, music cassette tapes forming a piano that makes music, a racing car, an off-the-peg gown made from clothes pegs, and a reading couch made from books.

Focusing firmly on the fashion and how we interact with it as an object of desire, Selfridges pulls no punches with its large black verbs stating consumer desire. "Want" "Obsess" and "Worship" scream the windows with one – just one – garment on display with a naive wooden crane/frame/lamp focusing on it, and the garment’s description written across the glass. It’s not a dialogue; these are commands.

FIXATE on Alexander Wang peep toe boots on 2.