Who was Gene Moore? A new campaign highlights groundbreaking creative force behind infamous Tiffany & Co. windows

By

Roxanne Robinson

Published
Mar 27, 2024

One of the most famous and enduring movie scenes is that of Audrey Hepburn in her role as Holly Golightly in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's', staring lovingly into the window display vitrines of the famous Fifth Avenue jeweler, in both awe and desire for the baubles on view. Golightly, or Hepburn for that matter, wasn't alone. Anyone strolling past the store beginning in the 1950s was bound to do a double take, thanks to the work of Gene Moore, Tiffany & Co. display manager, artistic director, and vice president for almost 40 years.

A new campaign, 'With Love, Since 1837', by the LVMH-owned jewelry company pays homage to Moore's tenure. FashionNetwork.com looks at the seminal work of the window dresser who paved the way for the imaginative and thought-provoking mise en scene in today's most luxurious retail spaces.

Moore rose as Tiffany & Co.'s top creative in 1955 after several high-profile display jobs at top American department stores, including Bergdorf Goodman for the once-popular Delman shoe brand, Bonwit Teller, with his first role at I. Miller. Moore left his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago before going to New York, where he began his self-taught design career.

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At Bonwit Teller, Moore was part of a legacy that the tony now-defunct retailer had for 'birthing' modern art movements such as Surrealism and Pop Art, where creatives-turned-fine artists Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist and the duo of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns under the pseudonym 'Matson Jones' used the large, empty glass front vitrines not only to sell clothes but express their artistic leanings.

When Moore decamped for Tiffany & Co., he worked with Matson Jones and Warhol on several displays there, as Tiffany & Co. vice president of creative visual merchandising Richard Moore told the Observer in a 2016 article. That is until, like Dali before them, they ascended into art world fame.

The famous window gazing scene featuring Hepburn from the Truman Capote book-turned-film 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' was foreshadowed while Moore worked at Bonwit Teller between 1945 and 1955. He then photographed Hepburn in a well-known portrait series in 1952.

The images were intended to be the muse for new mannequin designs for the luxury department store whose architecturally lauded store on Fifth Avenue met its demise in 1980. Upstart developer Donald Trump bought the building and reneged on his promise to donate the store's façade and relief work to the Met; instead, he demolished it.

Moore had a knack for combining fine jewelry with everyday objects or in banal situations, which redefined the prescribed way of showing fine jewelry and became part of the movement, elevating window dressing to an art form. (Moore's contemporaries included Henry F. Callahan at Lord & Taylor, Sidney Ring at Saks Fifth Avenue, and John R. Foley at Macy's, among others).

Along with Tiffany, Moore also worked on window display projects for Clarence House, Seagram Building, Delmar Shoe Salon, Madison Avenue Bookstore, American Museum of Natural History, Museum of Modern Art, Castelli Gallery, and Paul Taylor Dance Company.

During his almost 40-year tenure, Moore's approximately 5,000 window displays had a Surrealist and cinematic mood through using leaves, flowers, fruit, dirt, and sand that were set in situ with cloud backdrop or dusty roadside feelings further evoked with lighting and shadow play.

Memorable windows included putting a large diamond resting on a lettuce leaf, a broken necklace with pearls scattered, a stuffed hummingbird—part of Moore's collection that appeared in the displays often—holding a necklace in its beak like a worm, or jewelry strewn among broken glass and hammer almost depicting a smash and grab.

In Moore's 1998 obituary published by the New York Times, the article said the broken glass motif appeared so many times that passersby were known to call the police to report an attempted burglary. The obit also noted that in Moore's last window display for Tiffany, he filled all five windows with teddy bears in homage to his favorite teddy bear, Porridge.  

The creative designer was also known for creating jewelry and silver for Tiffany & Co. One of his most recognizable pieces is his 1988 'Tiffany Circus', featuring 28 miniature circus animals and performers.

Moore's 1990 autobiography 'My Time at Tiffany's' was written with Jay Hyams, and his body of work was the subject of the 1996-1997 exhibition, 'Moon Over Pearls: Gene Moore's Tiffany Windows and Beyond', held at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

In this current reimagining of Moore's work, Tiffany & Co. engaged photographer Dan Tobin Smith, an award-winning London-based photographer specializing in still-life and installation photography whose work spans industries from fashion, music, publishing, and advertising, to create the images with his window displays in mind.

The campaign focuses on the brand's core and defining collections: Lock, T, Knot, HardWear, Sixteen Stone, and the Tiffany Setting. Respectively, the designs also reference the house's famous heritage, such as the Lock bracelets, the 2022 design that references Tiffany & Co.'s 1883 padlock motif; the HardWear collection, which harkens back to a bracelet introduced in 1962 and naturally the signature Jean Schlumberger by Tiffany & Co. Sixteen Stone ring.

Tobin-Smith worked with award-winning set designer Rachel Thomas in London, where the duo recreated the windows with miniature to oversized scale models to shift perspectives. Eschewing modern technology post-production effects magic, Tobin Smith and Thomas captured the images on camera using animated projections serving as backdrops and smoke produced on set to create physical clouds, for example.

According to a text from the Smithsonian Institute archives, Walter Hoving, chairman of the board of Tiffany, charged Moore with the following mission: "I want you to make our windows as beautiful as you can according to your own taste ... Above all, don't try to sell anything; we'll take care of that in the store."