What exactly is so unsettling about this year’s Louis Vuitton window display?
God knows, this correspondent has the patience of a saint and never takes umbrage at anything, nor has he complained about any other Multrees Walk excesses of tastelessness earlier in the year.
So it’s not just grumpiness.
No, there’s definitely something odd about these puffins. Hence, much thought's gone into getting to the bottom of them.
For a start, puffins don’t come ashore at this time of year. They don’t really like the land, let alone frozen ground, and overwinter instead in rafts (floating flocks) way out on the North Atlantic where they don’t have to sit on Santa’s knee or eat mincepies or any of the other absurdities that pass for normal during the festive season.
So Louis Vuitton are ornithologically wrong.
And then there’s the sneaking suspicion that puffins have only been portrayed here because they’re black and white and so reminded somebody somewhere vaguely of penguins which do live in the snow. Penguins are cute. Snow falls at Christmas. Puffins are cute and black and white like penguins, therefore they're associated with snow and therefore they’re sort of Christmassy.
Only they’re not. They’re just not.
So Louis Vuitton are ontologically all at sea as well.
Then there’s the fact that some of these birds are traipsing through snowdrifts with ludicrously expensive bags on their heads. To what purpose? How? In what possible mixed up, muddled up, shook up world would this be possible? Why are they not also wearing Rolex watches and Calvin Klein underpants?
Louis Vuitton don’t care about reality. They just want to distract potential customers from the questionable morality of conspicuous display. For which purpose, quasi-Christmassy, cutesy puffin porters are just the ticket. How paradoxical, then, that these birds’ scientific name – Fratercula (little brothers) – refers to their resemblance to the humble, self-effacing habits of monks.
And then there’s how they keep bobbing up and down.
Like innocent, cheerful, clown-faced babies in a slow-motion game of Bash the Gopher …
All of which perhaps begins to explain why, last night, this correspondent dreamt he had died and gone to Hell. In an underworld ski resort with tar pits, whose sky had the spongy softness of a blood-red padded cell, he was tied to a stake by one hand whilst awaiting the not-so-tender ministrations of a demon.
With his free hand, this correspondent was using a mace to dash out the brains of little puffin people before they could deliver instruments of torture in clutch-bags to their satanic master.
That, dear reader, is what is wrong with the Louis Vuitton Christmas window display this year. It is an unheimlich portal to the everlasting bonfire.
And there are still 20 shopping days till Christmas.—AM
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@theSpurtle Puffins also only have full multicoloured beaks during the breeding season.
Broughton Spurtle @theSpurtle
@N_G_Jones Good point. Like Young Conservatives.
@theSpurtle Maybe that's the logic of the window display? #TargetAudience.
@N_G_Jones Possibly. But, in my experience, they only breed in March/April, and then mostly in burrows.
Email from P. Grigor: I passed by last week and saw that one poor puffin of burden had been squashed by its fancy load. I didn't know why I was making a record of this till now!
