In the Fall of 2024, The Urban Electric Co. approached legendary design editor and lifelong New Yorker, Robert Rufino, with a creative proposition for their annual publication, The Current: the opportunity to step back in time and revisit his career-defining early work designing windows for some of the city’s most storied institutions—from Henri Bendel to Tiffany & Co.—where he was among the originators of an evocative display style that came to be known as “street theater.”
The ambitious undertaking, conjuring worlds inspired by the stories in Volume 6 inside a series of 10th Street storefronts, unfolded over 12 months, culminating in a week-long celebration. What emerged was both an ode to a lost art form and a portrait of a man who has dedicated his life to turning flashes of inspiration into indelible moments of beauty, and who, after nearly 50 years at the forefront of the culture, shows no signs of slowing down.
