Encore la vitrine… — L’Officiel du cycle, 21 April 1951, Dressing the Cycle Dealer’s Window

From L’Officiel du cycle, 21 April 1951, page 15: the advice on dressing a cycle dealer’s window, with a drawing of one. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full. It belongs to the trade columns that the weekly addressed to the French cycle dealers, the vélocistes.

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ENCORE LA VITRINE…

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. The writer recalls that the previous page showed a drawing of a bicycle dealer’s window of the jumbled, bric-a-brac kind, and says that this time, deliberately, the window shown is one reduced to its simplest expression, as some really are.]

[Ebykr summary, after the opening lines. The writer asks what the passer-by, a possible buyer, wants: surely, before any definite idea, a pleasure for the eyes that can turn quickly into desire. A window that is too simplified, needing only a quick glance, does not even make him stop; he walks on, keeps no memory of the shop and will not think of it when the occasion arises. The street is always an adventure for the passer-by, and the shopkeeper must realize that he has to force the buyer’s hand by attracting him with means that rouse him from his torpor.]

[Ebykr summary, after the middle of the piece. The dealer’s customer is generally a modest one but, like any owner of a bicycle, motorcycle or car, he loves his machine as a child loves a tricycle or a toy train, a grown person’s plaything, and the window should flatter that fondness. It should be a wide horizon of possibilities for him: it must not frighten him with an off-putting luxury that seems to forbid a modest purchase, and by its order, cleanliness and sufficient stock it must inspire trust and show that the dealer can satisfy the humblest wishes. Some shops, like the one in the drawing, are so rigid in their display that people dread entering and having the coveted object moved from the window. In the shop a customer should feel a little at home, and a simple inquiry should cost nothing to the pride of a man whose purse is not well filled.]

[A text-only feature with a line drawing, framed at the top and right by a wavy ornamental border. The title stands across the head in large italic roman capitals, and the text below is set in italic type across the full width. At the lower left a line engraving in black shows a shop front: a window in a heavy frame with a door at its left and a plant in a pot on the sill above it, and within the window a gentleman’s roadster bicycle with a saddle, a chain guard and a rear rack, hung upright in the middle with a hanging fringe of thatch at the top, a small bracket shelf, a lamp-like fitting on a stand at the left and below it a winged mudguard end, a round lamp and a pump or similar part lying on the floor. The italic text wraps round the right side of the drawing in a narrow column. The drawing’s left edge is close to the crop and the plant at the left may be touched by it, but no text is cut. No signature or agency mark is visible.]