By Pablo Olmos Adamowich
Since I was young, I have been fascinated by a shop window's ability to transform the street into a stage, turning an everyday moment into something worth stopping to contemplate. The arrangement of objects, the colors, the light, and the details combined to tell wordless stories—like small exhibitions that invited one to dream, to imagine, and to connect with the world in a different way.
El Escaparate, Calle Mayor 4, Pedraza, Segovia.
I was born in a suburban city. Houston was a mosaic of neighborhoods with houses and gardens that could only be reached by car. There, shop windows lived inside shopping malls, tidy and predictable.
I discovered street-level shop windows while traveling to London, Buenos Aires, or Madrid. I was fascinated by those that invited you to stop, to forget the noise of cars and pedestrians for a few minutes, and that managed to suspend time. They were little stages to which someone had dedicated care and talent, and in which I would lose myself, dreaming, longing.
Wild oats (Avena fatua), common in cultivated fields and roadsides from late summer into autumn.
Over the years, I stopped looking only at the products and started admiring the staging. I remember when clothing stores would hang garments from ultra-fine fishing lines that, from a distance, made them look as if they were suspended in mid-air. Each piece, with its price tag precisely placed, seemed part of a delicate choreography.
Bakery windows were pure temptation: pastries and chocolates perfectly aligned, inviting you to choose yours before crossing the threshold. And those of the grocery stores were almost art installations: boxes, cans, and bags stacked with such discipline and order that they became hypnotic compositions of color and typography.
Today, after years of work in design, I have a shop window where I can offer experiences, emotions, and moments of ephemeral beauty.
To keep the stalks standing straight, it is necessary to build a wooden support with a metal grid.
I studied Fine Arts and my eye became sharper. I no longer just saw objects; I saw composition, rhythm, and narrative.
Later, when I moved to New York, the bar was raised even higher. I would walk by the department stores—Barneys, especially—where Christmas windows had a premiere date and were experienced as a true cultural event. There, I confirmed something I had already sensed: window dressing is an art. Just like in a museum or a gallery, all you need is a space, an audience, and the desire to move, provoke, or delight.
Collection and preparation process for the new window display at our shop in Pedraza.
Today, after years as a graphic designer, I have moved from interpreting commercial needs to something different: since July, I have had a shop window. A space that challenges me to create, that invites me to tell stories, to welcome gazes, to generate anticipation. For the first time, I feel that my work is on display, that it bears my signature.
Autumn sunset in Santiuste de Pedraza, Segovia.
El Escaparate
Our shop window is a living place, in constant transformation, where we present actions inspired by nature that accompany our philosophy of life and project. We want it to evolve in concept, creativity, and technique, letting it follow its own natural course.
This autumn, we are inspired by the golden light that envelops the Segovian countryside at dusk. Wild oat stalks—long, delicate, sun-drenched—have been the common thread of this first staging. An invitation to stop, look, and let time return, for an instant, to being suspended.
We invite you to discover El Escaparate at Calle Mayor 4, Pedraza, Segovia.
