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A Christmas window display is a bit like an open-air theater, there is the stage and its audience, which passes by and only stops walking when it sees the show that is being played, warmly behind its window, a whole set of things, colors, an artificial world staged to offer first an invitation to enter, and come and see more closely.



And when you get closer, you discover all the details that have been brought to this small ephemeral work of art, organized as a decoration of a grandiose show, at a very cute scale! Each window has its own story to tell, each decoration is unique, it is a craft of artisans, made-to-measure, handmade, it is a know-how that requires not only talents of staging, imagination and taste, but also cutting, gluing, choice of materials, mechanics and lighting ...

Marie Genon realized the very beautiful window of the maison Manalys, we met her and she shares with us about this creation.

LB > Hi Marie and thank you for giving us some of your time to get to know you better and also to learn about your talent as a decorator since it was you and your team who created the beautiful window display for the Manalys house. Tell us about yourself, Marie, and your background.
MG > Hello Calista, Thank you for this beautiful attention.
The idea was to highlight the Made in Brussels of the Manalys house which has its own workshops and whose manufacturing is essentially made in Brussels.
As well as to play with the architecture of the city, these incredible facades of a unique style that characterizes the many historical and artistic currents that have crossed this city. And at the same time, to take a different look at and apprehend in a different way the staging of the exceptional jewels of Manalys.
I am a set designer and I worked for 10 years with Karl Lagerfeld's team on the construction of the sets for the Chanel and Fendi fashion shows.
We built models of intentions to develop Karl's ideas and then we developed the model so precisely that the link was quickly made for me to jewelry. It was then that I trained at the Louvres school in Paris and that I pushed the ideas to the point of developing my company Irène by proposing jewellery design and some first pieces of high jewelry and jewelry entirely thought and designed with all these techniques developed which made the link between scenography, architecture and jewelry.



LB > I imagine that designing a window display such as the one at Manalys is equally exciting and challenging! How did you meet Moïse Mann, the creator of Manalys? How did you decide on this collaboration?
MG > From the Parisian sphere, I knew the name and the creations of Manalys and if I ever came back to Belgium, I would meet Moïse Mann!
Due to many personal reasons, I said goodbye to Paris and came back to live in the belgium of Brussels.
Moïse and his team gave me a very warm welcome and challenged me immediately on different aspects of creation, whether it was a jewel creation around a tourmaline, an emerald, an aquamarine or a yellow sapphire, but also on the creation of original and symbolic windows.
I thought it was original to display these wonderful gems in the facade, rings perched on balconies, earrings hanging from windows and necklaces stretched on a wire between two buildings against a background of big wheels and colored atomium, starry nights and openwork lace of the greenhouses of Laeken.



LB > Did your training as a jeweler help you in this process of creating the showcase and if so, in what ways?
MG > There is necessarily an obvious link between jewellery training and scenography but in this case, it is more unconscious. It is simply a matter of highlighting the pieces, the stones in knowledge of their values. 





LB > We can clearly see the very high level of detail of the decor, the openwork of the facades, the precision of the cuts.. can you explain the stages of creation of this showcase?
MG > Indeed, this showcase required several stages of work upstream.
Once the idea was posed, a drawn research of the architecture of the buildings was carried out in order to play with the different emblematic and symbolic graphics of Brussels.
Following this, it was important that each part of the decor could accommodate jewelry pieces to be presented in the window, hence a more practical reflection on technical assembly.
Designs, choice of materials, transparent/translucent to play with the different day lights and keep an eye open towards the store.
Drawings sketched by hand, cutouts and openwork, placement of colors, the magic and reverie of these gems in Brussels surprises!
As a team, in joy and good humor, we took pleasure in setting up this very precise little decor!

More information or want to discover this beauty, join Manalys at Blvd. de Waterloo, 11!