Waterford 1100 judges find their “Muse”

Muse was announced as the overall winner of the Waterford 1100 Window Display competition at a ceremony in the Medieval Museum, officiated by the Deputy Mayor of Waterford Metropolitan District, Cllr. John Carey.

With almost 40 registered entries from Waterford city, the competition, an initiative of Waterford City and County Council, supported by Waterford Chamber of Commerce and Waterford Business Group, encouraged businesses to create a window display to “celebrate Waterford.”

The judging panel of Billy Duggan, Chair of Waterford 1100 Committee, Peter Kelly, aka Franc and WLRfm’s Karen Tomkins, was highly impressed with the displays of the twelve finalists but agreed that Muse’s window display, located on the Quay “would not look out of place in a store in Paris, Milan or New York.”

Muse’s proprietor, Clodagh Roche, collected a cheque for €1,500, while runners up Fitzgerald’s Menswear, Cummins & Stone and Babycare received €1,000, €750 and €500 respectively.

Commenting at the awards ceremony, Deputy Mayor Carey said, “Each and every business that registered for the competition went to great efforts in creating visual window displays that not only reflected the Celebrate Waterford theme, but also caused passers-by to stop, have a glance, maybe take a second look and leave learning a little more about what makes Waterford great.”

He added “I hope that the creativity, vision, colour and stories displayed by Waterford businesses remain a permanent fixture in the shop windows of our city.”Announcing the overall winner, judges Franc and Karen said that the calibre of entries was extremely high, but the stand out features of the Muse window display were its creative use of space and the clever integration of the humble blaa with contemporary fashion to create a vista that could be interpreted as a ships sail or representative of the cable-span bridge, both strong Waterford themes.

According to Waterford 1100 Chair, Billy Duggan, there may be plans to repeat the competition next year.  “We were heartened by the great feedback we got from all the finalists.  The general feeling is that they would welcome this competition in the future as it really put the spotlight on their shop windows and their businesses.  In fact, it is undeniable that the window display competition created a buzz amongst retailers in Waterford city.”

For further information about events taking place in Waterford as part of Waterford 1100 celebrations check out the Facebook page or follow @Waterford1100 on Twitter.