Fancy restaurant!

Found in Uppsala. Restaurang Alexander. One of the KITCHIEST, most tasteless, ugly, revolting restaurants ever! Take a look at the photos and experience the ultimate lack of taste by yourself! In particular, look at the last photo.

Yes, this is supposed to be Venus of Milo!

High fashion in Sweden

Swedes are well-known for being fashionable. Well, in their own sense. Which is very different from other European countries. They pay a lot of money for used clothes, or for clothes that look old and used. Also, young people like to dress like their grandfathers and old people like to dress like their granddaughters. I showed you what kind of underwear they like. Now I want to show you a typical women's fashion store:

 Notice how elegant they are and how graceful the design of this window is. Let us focus on some details. At the bottom of the blue dress, you see a collection of belts, in Swedish colors (blue and yellow), of course. This is surely the perfect place to display belts.

 Look at the white dress next to the mannequin. Pretty, isn't it? In fact, there is a mask attached to it. Let me explain its use. Swedish women of any age, from 10 to 90, will wear this dress easily. Non-Swedish women may have a problem with it. They may think that it's old-fashioned. (Clearly, they are not that advanced, yet.) This is why the mask is provided. It is given for free and it can be used by non-Swedish women who wear this dress; they can cover their face.

Last but not least, look at the faded picture of Marilyn Monroe. An excellent addition to the artistic window design.

Yves Saint Laurent had never visited Sweden. This is why his designs remained so primitive.

Hairdresser

I love hair salons windows here. They are amazingly elegant, delicately designed, conveying the graceful feel of the job, prevailing in current fashion of window displaying, artful, luxurious, ornately crafted, graceful, offering the sense of majestic, and, most of all, paying attention to the last detail. I will give you an example from the following shop:

The thing that caught my attention is the sumptuous cloth used in the display, a very simple, indeed, display, obeying the rules of minimalistic design. Love at first sight:

Let us zoom in at the lonely candle, brilliantly placed in the middle (click on the photo to zoom in):

We discover

1. Hair thrown all over, hair recently cut from human heads. What a brilliant idea to decorate the window with hair!
2. A dead fly at the bottom left hand corner of the photo.

One wonders if these additions are done by mistake or if they were part of a design scheme, so let us turn the camera to other parts of the window. Look closely in the middle, between the hairstyling products, and you will see more hair:

Look at the sides of the window and you see even more hair:

And finally look at another part of the window to see a used bag of very fine Swedish snus bag.

No hairdressers in the world would have had the brilliant idea of decorating their windows with flies, snus and human hair, lots and lots of hair, hair everywhere. But in Sweden we love to be original! We offer decorations which are a pleasure to the eye and food for the soul and spirit. People think that hairdressers' prices are very high in Sweden. But they have to take into account that they pay both for great haircuts and for the design experience, the pleasure of being in a clean, artfully-decorated environment. The particular hairdresser charges 340 SEK (about 51 US dollars) for a simple haircut, but offers a generous discount for children and retired people: 320 SEK (48 US dollars), a whole 5% discount!

A friend of mine did not like the decoration, so she told the shop, Salong de Två, to change it. Again, they applied a minimalistic approach. Rather than getting rid of the hair, they took down a purple curtain and tossed it on top:

Ofvandahl's

There is a famous cafe in Uppsala, called "Ofvandahl". According to the Lonely Planet review,

 it’s endorsed by no less a personage than the king [of Sweden]

But let's see what this famous place looks like. Here are some window views. Take a look at the curtains, the latest of Swedish design:

 Next look at the delicious pastries on display. If they look dirty and full of dust, then this is because they are precisely so. In fact, it is not uncommon to see various species of insects lying on the windows and on the actual pastries themselves. Why, protein is included for free.

Now take a look at the design of the lamp shades. All bought at the second-hand store next door, and never cleaned. They remain in the pristine condition of the day they were bought.

But what is best of all, is the cleanliness of the shop. Take a look at the spoon I was given alongside with the coffee I ordered. They didn't even bother to clean it.

Ofvandahl's is a famous place endorsed by no less a personage than the king [of Sweden].

Lingerie shop

Swedish women are known for their beauty. We have the best blondes in the world. Blondes that know how do dress inside and outside. They shop their underwear in fashionable places like the one below. I would like to point out a few details below each photo

Here you see a delicate pair of underwear, for women with taste. They are displayed next to a fake rose probably picked up from a funeral shop decoration. Do not judge the size of Swedish buttocks by this display.

Same shop, different style, for slightly more delicate body types.

And here is the whole window. Notice, in particular, the red cloth. It's an old faded curtain which found a use in this window display. We surely like to reuse and recycle.

Do you think there is a resemblance to the grandmother's knickers below?