Walk past the window of any shop and it is the display that determines if you need to continue window shopping or upgrade to real time purchases. If the tastefully styled mannequins and intriguing window displays have caught your eye then there is one person who can take a bow — the visual merchandiser.
They do much more than dressing up the mannequins and it is their talent that brings the displays to life, lures customers in and translates that to sale. Not an easy job as Bengaluru-based Tanisha Arora — the head visual merchandiser with Restore Design would attest. Especially since Tanisha’s forte is in working with recycled goods.
Tanisha started off being a jewellery designer but found that it was limiting her. So she changed tracks, “I started looking out for jobs in space design and visual merchandising which did not materialise since I had no experience.” Meanwhile, she applied for a scholarship in London which came through and she specialised in visual merchandising.
It was Tanisha’s stint in London that changed her perspective in terms of sustainable designs. She discovered that trash could turn into fashionable pieces of art if creatively placed. So in upmarket Oxford Street, which is home to top luxury brands with their equally flamboyant window designs, Tanisha got an opportunity to debut her upcycled window display. That became a transition point in her career, “There was a small salon there that required a window display in a small budget. So, I went around collecting discarded shampoo bottles, blowers etc, saying it was for my art project and made that window display in the basement of my student hostel,” she says.
Twenty-seven-year-old Tanisha works hard but she also loves to take time out for herself. Travel is a major stressbuster but Tanisha choses to veer away from usual destinations. It was Antarctica that called out to her and whose call she heeded. Robert Swan the explorer and motivational speaker is one of her favourite personalities. Since she followed his work, she also knew about his Climate Force project that takes a select group of people across the world to Antartica every year. She decided to send him an email and pitched herself for the journey. On the November of 2016, on her birthday, she got a call confirming her selection and to arrange funds. “That was the time demonetisation happened and no company had funds and I got rejected by 60 companies. It was my ex-boss who came to my aid along with a scholarship and some crowd funding. I gave up my social life for two months because I was so busy, seven hours after work pitching my idea to different companies. It was an emotional experience that taught me a lot- especially dealing with rejection” she recalls.
The 15-day trip to the polar region in March 2017 more than made up for Tanisha’s hard work. For one she got to meet her idol Robert as also 80 different people from different industries. The sights that greeted her will be forever etched in her mind. “We would do two landings each day where we would be left in between 1000’s of different species of penguins. The Zodiac boats got us up close and personal with crab eating seals as well as huge whales that surfaced right beside us. It was so beautiful to see them in their natural habitat. Antartica is so untouched and makes you realise how much humans have invaded earth,” she recollects.
