Since we spent Thanksgiving week in Milan, I thought I'd post a few pictures of things we saw. This post is all shop windows:
Italians care a lot about making things look beautiful, so naturally their shop windows are carefully arranged. The windows not only provide spots of bright color in an otherwise brown city like Milan, but shopkeepers keep passersby intrigued by changing the displays frequently. Sometimes we'd see an interesting item in a window, only to find it replaced by something else later in the day. This disappearing display game, naturally, invites customers to venture inside a shop to find the lost item.
The window that first caused us to notice the rotating displays was one in a libreria (bookstore) on Via G. G. Mora, which is a narrow cut-through between two major streets in the southeastern part of central Milan. As we passed the window on our way back home from our first big walk around the city, I did a double take: "Wow! Those clothes are nice enough to make me want a Barbie!" So the next time I went out, I took a photo. And it's a good thing I did, because a day or two later, the Barbies all disappeared.
The same day, we noticed these recycling bins on a major thoroughfare. I thought they were very clever, with their three pull-out drawers for different materials and a bottle-squasher on top, all in a rocketship shape. Oddly, these bins were displayed next to a very traditional cabinetry setup, perhaps the only traditional-looking cabinetry store I saw in all Milan. (The Italians seem to like modern cabinetry stores. Sometimes you'll see two or more in a block. One near our apartment had lighting that changed colors at night when the store was closed.)
And then there was this "red blood cell" plate (let). I had noticed it near our apartment one day on my way home, and wondered why I hadn't noticed it before. But by the time I went out again with the camera, it had moved to a table in the middle of the store.
But this little pink pig moka pot caused CZ and me to stop right in the street when we saw it and pull out the camera. Its name is a pun: A maialetto is a little pig, but "mai a letto" means "never to bed." which is of course, a perfect name for a coffee pot, especially one that makes espresso. And the pig reminded us of our own little pink plastic pig, whom I'd hidden in CZ's suitcase. But CZ had found him and then lost him inside her backpack, so that's where he spent the trip. No doubt he was sulking! (Or maybe he heard about casoeula and hid.)
And finally, there was this little doll in the window of a large toy store in the Piazza Cordusio, near the Duomo. I'm quite taken by miniature toys anyway, but this little bambina wearing her colander as a hat was especially charming.
But perhaps my favorite display of all was one that I didn't get a photo of: Little pink and blue baby socks rolled up inside muffin-papers to look like cupcakes with rippled icing, and another set of baby socks in primary colors, displayed to look like half a dozen eggs in a carton.
Che belle vetrine!
