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The visuals team at Saks Fifth Avenue doesn't take a holiday, and this holiday season is no exception. The iconic department store outdid itself once again with this year's Winter Palace, turning its facade into a royal spectacle of more than 225,000 dancing lights that entertain Fifth Avenue shoppers and revelers every ten minutes until nearly midnight.
In the windows themselves are the Winter Wonders of the World, where fantasy recreations of China's Great Wall, Rome's Coliseum, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and more are given the frosty treatment and swathed in decorative snow and icy blue lighting, as well as lavish holiday party scenes. Unlike some of its counterparts across the city, Saks puts a heavy emphasis on current fashion here, with winter-white designs bedecking some of the most expressive mannequins we've ever seen. The stray Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo pump makes an appearance as decorations, too.
Check out up-close details of the windows in the gallery above, photographed for Racked by Khushbu Shah, and see what the city's other department stores — like Lord & Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys — have set up this season for passersby to ogle.