In the radiant symmetry of New York City’s most storied retail corridor, the windows of Bergdorf Goodman have never merely functioned as displays. They are portals—frames through which the city views itself and is reflected back in grandeur, artifice, and ever-evolving cultural elegance. Last week, that reflective tradition was reimagined in extraordinary scale and emotional resonance, as artist Jason Bard Yarmosky unveiled Timeless Women in New York, a commanding new exhibition that fuses fashion portraiture, community tribute, and monumental public art.

Stretching across five Fifth Avenue windows, the installation features towering seven-foot portraits of women who are more than muses. They are cultural contributors, creative visionaries, and civic figures who have not only influenced their disciplines, but have helped to define the living, breathing spirit of New York. Painted with reverence, each subject stands as a testament not only to her own work, but to a broader spectrum of femininity, resilience, and metropolitan identity.

Among the women honored are art patron Carla Shen, fashion models JoAni Johnson and Cate Underwood, chef and activist Sophia Roe, and Bergdorf Goodman’s own Linda Fargo. Each figure is dressed in looks curated from the pinnacle of the fashion world—Marc Jacobs, Christopher John Rogers, Gaurav Gupta, Schiaparelli, and Thom Browne. More than styling choices, these garments are visual dialogues between wearer and designer, subject and viewer, past and present. The effect is both cinematic and deeply human, reflecting Yarmosky’s commitment to collapsing the boundaries between traditional portraiture and contemporary storytelling.

The Portrait as Urban Iconography

Jason Bard Yarmosky is no stranger to the theme of time, or its role in shaping identity. His past works—most notably his Elder Kinder and Dreamers series—explored aging, memory, and generational consciousness through hyperrealist renderings of the elderly in youthful fantasy roles. With Timeless Women in New York, the artist turns his gaze toward a broader archetype: women whose presence, voice, and work ripple through the city’s psyche like permanent architecture.

Each subject in the exhibition is rendered at a scale more typically reserved for historical muralism or public monuments. But this is no nostalgia act. Instead, Yarmosky’s women are bathed in soft shadow and atmospheric light, evoking not stillness but motion, a temporal swirl that suggests they are still becoming. The monumental size is not about dominance but reverence. In the compressed space between a city street and a department store window, Yarmosky invites passersby to confront presence—and to consider who is seen, who is celebrated, and who commands the visual field of New York.

Linda Fargo: The Matriarch in Her Kingdom

In a particularly symbolic inclusion, Bergdorf Goodman’s own Senior Vice President of Fashion and Store Presentation, Linda Fargo, is captured in regal poise. Dressed in a sculptural black gown by Thom Browne, her portrait blends fashion drama with quiet authority. Known widely as the face and voice behind Bergdorf’s trend-setting selections, Fargo’s image is both meta and metaphoric. Here she becomes a steward of both taste and tradition, gazing out over the street she has helped dress and define.

Her inclusion isn’t just institutional homage; it is acknowledgment of the often invisible labor of cultural curation. In her role, Fargo has amplified emerging designers, pushed bold visual language in fashion merchandising, and maintained Bergdorf Goodman’s place as one of the last true temples of luxury retail. Yarmosky’s painting catches her mid-expression—eyes lucid, posture unflinching. She is neither past nor future. She is now.

JoAni Johnson: The Resplendence of Defiance

Few figures in contemporary fashion challenge conventional narratives like JoAni Johnson. A model who entered the industry later in life, Johnson has become a celebrated face of age diversity and the power of authentic presence. In Yarmosky’s portrait, she is wrapped in the vivid eccentricity of a Gaurav Gupta gown—curved lines, sharp geometry, and molten shimmer working in tandem to both echo and elevate her natural silhouette.

What resonates here is not only Johnson’s elegance, but her story—a woman who refused invisibility and carved space in an industry obsessed with youth. Through Yarmosky’s brush, Johnson is not merely captured; she is canonized. She stares down Fifth Avenue like a sentinel, her face etched with both softness and strength.

Sophia Roe: Radical Nourishment in Artistic Form

Activist, chef, and storyteller Sophia Roe has long used food as a medium of empowerment and education. Her portrait, styled in a dynamic look by Christopher John Rogers, balances intellectual clarity with visual rhythm. In Yarmosky’s hands, Roe becomes a spiritual figure—one whose cultural nourishment mirrors culinary offering. Her position in the window carries weight beyond fashion. It signifies the importance of voices who nourish not only bodies, but communities.

Roe’s gaze, direct and contemplative, becomes a visual meal of its own—sustaining, generous, urgent. As one of the few figures in the intersection of culinary activism and social justice, her portrayal reinforces that nourishment is not a domestic task but a radical act.

Carla Shen & Cate Underwood: Patronage and Poise

Carla Shen’s contribution to the arts scene—particularly as a patron, board member, and advocate—often operates in quieter frequencies. Yarmosky’s painting brings her into visual crescendo. Wearing a graceful yet architectural Marc Jacobs ensemble, she appears contemplative, as though caught in a moment of aesthetic reckoning. Shen is not a passive supporter of art but an enabler of ecosystems. Her depiction acknowledges that art does not flourish without those who champion it, invest in it, and protect its autonomy.

Cate Underwood, meanwhile, brings editorial sharpness to the exhibition. Known for her blend of high fashion modeling and visual arts practice, she straddles the line between subject and image-maker. Yarmosky’s portrayal of her—simultaneously cool and commanding—reflects an iconography of empowered detachment. With fashion as her armor, Underwood represents a cosmopolitan ideal that is neither aloof nor inaccessible, but reflective of the creative contradictions that animate the city.

Bergdorf Goodman as Cultural Proscenium

The exhibition’s physical location—within the revered windows of Bergdorf Goodman—infuses the project with additional layers of meaning. Since the early 20th century, Bergdorf’s windows have served as mini-theaters of luxury, fantasy, and urban narrative. From Simon Doonan’s whimsical stagings to David Hoey’s surrealist spectacles, they have always been more than visual merchandising; they are public art.

In giving these windows over to Jason Bard Yarmosky, the department store isn’t just showcasing product. It is curating presence. The decision reflects a broader philosophy at Bergdorf Goodman: that luxury, when rooted in intention, can serve cultural dialogue. By transforming windows into stages for honorific portraiture, the store steps into the role of civic gallery—one where anyone walking down Fifth Avenue becomes an unintentional visitor.

On Thursday evening, Goodman’s Bar within the store played host to a private celebration of the installation. Guests from the art, fashion, and culinary worlds mingled under chandeliers and discussed what it means to be “timeless” in a city that prides itself on rapid evolution. Present were not only Yarmosky’s collectors and collaborators, but the women he painted—each of whom moved through the room as though they had stepped out from the canvas only moments earlier.

Art, Fashion, and the Feminine Vanguard

What Timeless Women in New York ultimately offers is not nostalgia, but a radical expansion of cultural portraiture. These are not icons remembered, but women revered in real time. By choosing subjects whose contributions extend far beyond visual glamour, Yarmosky offers a new metric for beauty: the depth of one’s cultural footprint.

The collaboration between artist and fashion house is symbiotic. Clothes are not costumes; they are armors of expression. And the painter’s eye is not voyeuristic but reverential. Through brushstroke and textile, the exhibition finds its rhythm: dignity over drama, presence over pretense.

As much as this is Yarmosky’s moment, it is also Bergdorf Goodman’s quiet assertion that fashion has a future when it aligns itself with humanity. In an age of accelerating algorithms, where identity is often flattened into content, Timeless Women in New York insists on stillness. On scale. On seeing.

Impression: A Living Archive of Influence

There is an argument to be made that New York, as an idea, cannot be fully captured—only reflected. Jason Bard Yarmosky’s Timeless Women in New York doesn’t attempt to summarize the city, but rather, to embody it through the faces of women who have shaped its creative heart. In doing so, he transforms the Bergdorf Goodman windows into stained glass—each pane an ode to vision, complexity, and feminine resilience.

As the city walks by, selfies are taken, moments are paused, and eyes are lifted. And in those gestures, the exhibition succeeds. Not because it shouts, but because it listens. Because it reminds us that every great city is built not only by monuments and markets, but by the stories and spirits of its people—especially those women who, in timeless elegance and evolving strength, continue to move it forward.

No comments yet.