At Hermès Bond Street, FACE by Holition is awaiting discovery. An old-fashioned TV screen set inside an astronaut’s helmet displays a live feed of Bond Street, almost as if the famous London street has relocated to another planet. As spectators approach, their face is tracked and the animation ignites with a countdown, leaving Earth behind and transcending the viewer, as if through a video game, to the Hermès galaxy.
On the first of two journeys, the viewer’s facial features are augmented onto a 1960s depiction of the moon. A horse, the Hermès muse, rears up atop the anthropomorphised moon as the viewer becomes a magical glittering moon-face. As soon as the first journey concludes, a second journey transports the viewer’s face into a technicolour solar system, within an avatar of rainbow planets and shimmering stars, an asteroid shoots past.
This narrative is split across two windows that frame the entrance to the store, allowing spectators to see from all angles.