Plans are back. Spring feels very different this year after over a year in lockdown and there is no question that the world shrank in different ways for all of us. The shop-windows of our minds and lives became ever-smaller. Hemmed in by technology and physical disconnection the dark and cold of winter felt unusually bleak. 

As spring approaches, the beginning of a new season feels particularly precious this year, accompanied by equal parts excitement and trepidation. It’s an ecosystem in which the role of brands in providing post-pandemic positivity is increasingly clear.

Enter Selfridges, which today unveiled its new windows, four days early ahead of their doors reopening on Monday 12th April. The windows, which are “inspired by the pleasure and optimism found in nature” feature straplines such as ‘Find your get up and grow’. 

The theme for this season's windows draws on the store’s 2021 creative theme ‘Good Nature’ which the team describe as “a celebration of pleasure in nature, conceived with optimism for a future of restoration and growth, offering visitors physical and digital experiences responding to the natural world.”

Nature and escapism are at the creative heart of this new window series and Selfridges has also commissioned up and coming British artist Jonathan Schofield to interpret the Good Nature theme  for three windows on Orchard Street. The artist’s mixed media installation features original artworks, digital screen prints and fabric banners.  

This year’s windows are Selfridges most sustainable to date with the majority of materials used being recyclable or, when possible, recycled. This is in direct response to the store’s Project Earth initiative launched in August 2020, which pledges to ensure the most environmentally impactful materials used throughout the business come from certified, sustainable sources by 2025. 

The colourful windows come as the store prepares to boost its in-store experiences. This will include a partnership with SoulCycle to open its first Outside Studio in the UK on Edwards Mews behind Selfridges Oxford Street store. 

Selfridges London will also launch a new experience concierge which will comprise of a new gifting service which will offer curated experiences including floristry workshops and out of hours children’s parties in the toy department. 

Commentators have long decreed that the high street is dead yet as Selfridge’s windows remind us, experience-deprived consumers may well disagree.