The Winter Palace at Saks Fifth Avenue captures the Taj Mahal like never before.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: You may have seen the breathtaking beauty of the Taj Mahal in moonlight, when the white marble mausoleum seems drenched in almost ethereal light. But have you ever seen a glittering Taj Mahal, frosted, with ice all around, and a maharani perched on a cloud above it dressed in modern regalia?
It’s, of course, unbelievable to even imagine specks of snow, forget ice, in the sweltering hot city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located on the banks of the Yamuna River. Global warming has some way to go, before that epic event happens.
But you could see a mini replica of the Taj Mahal in Manhattan, at the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York, through early January.
In the first of its kind, the holiday window decorations at the Saks store this year relied upon some global attractions, including the inimitable Taj Mahal, in its wondrous ‘The Winter Palace’, on its iconic front façade.
With towering light icicles, crystal palace spires and chandeliers, and snowy magnolia arches, ‘The Winter Palace’ has been superbly conceived, and looks spectacular. The lines in front of the windows stretched over a block move slowly as people take in so much of beauty, click photographs at the same time. The decorations were unveiled with a light show and a choir rendition by 200 members from The Oratorio Society of New York and the Cathedral Choristers of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
According to Saks, the entire show took more than 225,000 individual points of controlled light, and more than 10,000 hours to produce.
Apart from the Taj Mahal, some of the other notable wonders made fantastic, include the ‘Empress of China’ sliding alongside the Great Wall of China, the ‘mighty Gladiatrix’ battling above the Colosseum, and an ‘Icy Mermaid’ marveling at the beauty found within the frozen Great Barrier Reef, with exotic fashion to match.
And for those who make it to New York City before winter brings in some real snow and ice, walk across the road to the Rockefeller Center ice rink, to see some real ice.
It was befitting to the Taj Mahal, the most famous monument in the world to love, that on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, the rink was cleared briefly of skaters, for a man to propose to his girlfriend. She accepted it with glee. The couple kissed.
The couple then skated around the rink hand in hand as hundreds of onlookers clapped and cheered. It was a perfect New York moment.
The Taj Mahal continued to glitter brighter through the Saks window as the evening progressed.