What do a lawyer, a Burberry donned businessman, the Phantom of the Opera, rock legend Elvis, a Beach Boy, a punk, a “good time” girl and a stretch limousine have in common?

They've all turned into reindeer - and they're all sitting in the windows of Hamilton department store H.A.& E. Smith's.

The funky reindeer are the latest creation from window dresser Will Collieson.

Of course window dresser isn't Mr. Collieson's real title - he is officially the display manager. But many locals think of Smith's as having the best windows in Bermuda - and Mr. Collieson has been responsible for that for a long time - nearly 30 years.

But titles aside, if you ask Mr. Collieson to describe what he is, “artist” is his reply.

Still, in the minds of many locals, ‘window dresser' is how he would be pegged - take salon owner William Mayo, who mused as he walked by the Smith's windows earlier this week: “He is the best window dresser - not only in Bermuda but in the world,” he said, on seeing Mr. Collieson.

Mr. Collieson concedes that his is a bit of a double life, window dresser by day, artist by night. He is very much both however and keeps up an active role in the local art scene by exhibiting his work and as an exhibit designer for numerous shows through the years at the Bermuda National Gallery (BNG) including Made in Bermuda and Through British Eyes.

Along the way he has gained a solid reputation for both his window design and his art.

BNG director Laura Gorham called Mr. Collieson “one of the most important artists” in Bermuda, adding that although he is very serious about his art and has clear ideas on his inspirations and what he wants to achieve, he doesn't take himself too seriously. Mr. Collieson has been involved with the gallery since it first opened its doors in 1992: “We roped him in early,” Ms Gorham said.

But one does wonder how he does it all - especially when you also take into consideration that he is a family man, a fan of motor racing (something he picked up from his father who, he said, would drag him off to a race instead of going to football matches between Liverpool and Newcastle) and an avid runner - but Mr. Collieson takes it all in stride, literally.

Mr. Collieson has been ‘on the run' since his days as a school boy running cross country although he did take a break from it in the 1960s: “In that day any form of athletic pursuit was seen as slightly fascist,” he said. But eventually Mr. Collieson took the sport up again and nearly 20 years ago the “running bug” bit for good when he ran the Princess to Princess race: “The bug bit at that point and since then I have run 18 consecutive May 24 races.”

Friends tell of his leaving the Bermuda National Gallery one evening on foot for his home in St. George's after working on an installation piece for an exhibition - a 12-mile jog he passes off as little more than a walk through the park.

Mr. Collieson, an Englishman, first came to Bermuda at the age of 23. It was 1971 and he was working as a display assistant in Liverpool. Although he'd only recently returned to England after a stint travelling around Europe, his ears perked up when a friend of his mother's mentioned that she had seen an H.A.&E Smith's advertisement in a UK paper.

The store was looking for a new display manager and Mr. Collieson applied: “I went down to London for an interview - drove all night - to see (the late and then Smith's president) Sir Henry (Vesey)...and I got the job,” he said.

With the exception of returning briefly to the UK to work and live in the late 1970s, Bermuda has been home for the past three decades.

Of his brief return to England, Mr. Collieson said: “Even though I had returned to England, I was still consulting for Smith's and coming out to the Island every three to four months.” Then one grey morning Mr. Collieson was coming into King's Cross train station and thought “What am I doing?” and decided to head back to the Island.

Bermuda is where he and his wife, Wendy - they met at art school in England - have raised their two sons: James, 25, the Island's top tennis player and Bermuda's only touring professional, and Adam, 22, a law student at Kent University. Mrs. Collieson has worked for some 15 years in the treasury department at the Bank of Butterfield. As for how he got to be a ‘window dresser' in the first place, Mr. Collieson said his parents were a little concerned about their son's pursuit of art - having chosen to go to art college after attending boy's public school Wellington - and pushed him to find work.

“There weren't that many related jobs,” he said, but there was a job going, as a design assistant, and he's been at it ever since. In his field, this is a big time of year: “At Christmas people expect a bit of a show,” he said. But when it comes to festive ideas, he never does the same thing twice, although he does “take a traditional idea and reinvent it”. This year it just happens to be the reindeer.

Mr. Collieson cited what he does and the visual merchandising of such chains as Gap and Banana Republic as being distinct from each other, and said department stores were really the “last vestige of window display”. “With the exception of a few stores, it is almost a dying trade,” he said, but claimed there was still a place for it: “Windows bring people into the shop by showing off the best of what you've got.”

He said appealing to shoppers was key and that shopping patterns have shifted to more “impulse, and increasingly recreational”.

Mr. Collieson says he is kept informed on when new stock is coming in but he also wanders around Smith's looking for that tucked away item: “The one that may not have been noticed but will sell once it is isolated in a window display,” he said. Neckties are a favourite: “I never wear a tie but I love using ties in the displays,” he said.

As for the aesthetics of window display design, Mr. Collieson is a proponent of ‘less is more'.

“I use subtle backgrounds. Black, grey, khaki, those are the colours for the next 2000 years - clean colours. And I keep the windows contemporary, which doesn't mean they are way-out but that there is a minimal element. Understatement is the statement.” And Mr. Collieson cited the design process as architectural: “It is about blocks of space and light and it is just as much about the space you use as the space you don't use.”

As for the pace of his job, Mr. Collieson, who is currently the only person working in the design department, described it as “stop and go” with intense times followed by “breathing periods”.

He generally changes the windows every three to four weeks, with the exception of Christmas when the windows remain the same throughout the holiday shopping period. On doing window displays, Mr. Collieson said: “I enjoy it, maybe that is a strange thing to say - a bit like saying I enjoy knitting but I don't find it hard at all. I've come to the point where I can work very quickly...and I like the process.”

As for his art, he doesn't really see that as work either but something he is driven to do: “I produce things constantly - whether or not they get exhibited or not is probably accidental,” he said. Reflecting on his development as an artist, Mr. Collieson speaks of his early days around Liverpool: “I loved living there. I have always been intrigued by industrial areas...the pathos, and that doesn't leave you, you just reinvent it,” he said.

Listening to him speak, one gets an image of Mr. Collieson tinkering away in the downstairs studio at his East end home. Mr. Collieson said as a school boy he developed a penchant for collecting things and seeing what he could do with his finds. That would still be true today, and a practice that has earned him yet another title: “urban archaeologist”, a reference to his use of second-hand materials in his art. He likes the fact that his found objects have a history: “They come with something...”, he said. On his work table sit a dead lizard and frog. Mr. Collieson found them when he was out running and they've now been “doused in latex” the lizard now a stark grey, the frog a nearly-fluorescent green.

“They'll sit on my desk until I eventually find a use for them,” he said, and adds that he has used “bones, skeletons, all sorts of things...” in his art. He claimed there were “no boundaries” for what he might incorporate into his pieces.

But that doesn't mean his art incites controversy - except for the time he exhibited work inspired by the American flag at a local gallery. Some American visitors who stopped by to see the show were none too pleased with his rendition of the ‘stars and stripes' and asked that his work be taken down. That is the closest he said he has come to any sort of artistic scandal, a point he seems a bit sad about: “If my work was more controversial, I would feel like I was getting somewhere...I am aiming for that,” he said with a smile.

As for whether or not his art and his window designs feed off each other, Mr. Collieson said: “I'd say the windows benefit from (my) art but maybe not the reverse...” He said he feels like his art is “not free enough. I tend to do things in boxes - and I am trying to break out of the box,” he said, adding that he “loves to see artists be uninhibited with their art”. Mr. Collieson's window designs can be seen year round at H.A.& E. Smith's and he is exhibiting next as an artist in the Metal Works show opening this Sunday at the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard.