Floating holiday
The Parade’s 27 floats are designed and hand-built with artful ingenuity
M any months before we see the floats snaking their way along the Parade route, a devoted team of workers toil to build these jaw-dropping creations.
It all happens in a 100,000-square foot warehouse in Moonachie, n.J., the Macy’s Parade Studio. John Piper, studio vice president, is the leader of the team of 26 which pulls it all off each year.
This year, an innovative Ocean Spray float will grace the Parade, and like all of the floats, it began as a sketch.
“We met with them [Ocean Spray] and learned as much as we possibly could about them,” says Piper. “That helps us get into the core of who they are.”
The team discovered that Ocean Spray is actually a cooperative of farmers.
“It made sense for us to focus on the harvest, which is this time of year,” he says, “and the cranberries for the Thanksgiving dinner.”
The team chose as its central focus a turkey and a goose standing in a cranberry bog, the berries undulating like ocean waves.
From the sketch, Piper’s team creates full renderings, then makes technical drawings with detailed dimensions.
Then comes detailed drawings of the characters. “We make a rough model out of white foam or white illustration board or sculpt it in clay,” Piper says.
From start to finish, floats take between four to nine months to build. They also have to be rigged to make sure they all fit through the Lincoln Tunnel’s maximum width of 12.5 feet.
all the floats are painted by hand. “I tell kids who visit the studio that we have every color in the rainbow, plus two,” says Piper. — Diane Herbst