Review of Bloomingdale’s Holiday 2025 Ad Campaign
In a striking move for the season ahead, Bloomingdale’s has unveiled their collaborative Happy Together campaign—utilizing the storied New York flagship at 59th Street to serve as the theatrical stage for its year-long partnership with Burberry. The façade of Bloomingdale’s is lit up with warmth wrapped in a monumental Burberry check scarf, morphing the exterior into a symbol of shared heritage and bold ambition. This campaign arrives at a moment when experiential retail is key, and it positions the luxury retailer not simply as a destination, but as a moment in itself.
Inside, the visual narrative gives way to a layered fusion of celebration and craftsmanship: the Carousel pop-up is re-imagined as an immersive Burberry capsule space, the red-check motif extending across women’s, men’s, kids’, and home categories. The mood is festive yet restrained, theatrical yet elegantly refined. The styling captures Burberry’s heritage—trench coats, cashmere scarves, refined tailoring—while the scene invites guests to linger, explore, and discover. The Lexington Avenue windows complement this internal staging with an exterior spectacle that signals holiday grandeur without sacrificing identity.
What shines in this campaign is its layered sophistication: the unions of two icons of luxury with storied pasts, the weaving of narrative and retail, the flair of showmanship anchored by craft. Bloomingdale’s, who has traditionally hinged on department-store immediacy, here it transcends into curatorial theatre. Though some may question whether the message remains clear about gifts and heritage, or whether spectacle overtakes substance. But, while the partnership is cohesive thematically, Bloomingdale’s own voice is somewhat subsumed beneath Burberry’s marque and identity—an alignment of equals, but perhaps at the cost of singularity. Yet in an era when physical retail must compete with digital ubiquity, the campaign’s collaboration and alignment with experience-driven luxury is keenly attuned with the goal of creating an invitation for department store holiday spending that one can’t refuse.
Happy Together is a celebration of intersection—heritage meeting occasion, brand meeting environment, tradition meeting transformation. It crafts a dialogue not just with shoppers, but with the broader narrative of how luxury can live in space and time. What remains after the windows glow and the scarves flutter is the memory of New York wrapped in intent. In the moment of stillness between retail and holiday tradition, Bloomingdale’s and Burberry remind us that the true gift of the season is not simply what we buy—but the scene we inhabit, and whom we share it with.
