Who doesn’t want to hit pause on life and stare at the Hermès’ mighty gorg window displays?
The Hermès boutique on Orchard Road always stops us in our tracks. But last weekend, we stood in front of the store windows for far too long and we blame Oscar Diaz, the Spanish-born product designer responsible for the store’s new artistic window display.
With ‘Play’ as Hermès’ theme, it’s no shocker they picked Oscar to dress their windows. He’s constantly exploring and asking the darndest, most outrageously awesome questions like “What if?”. For the main window, he toys with tennis while the smaller windows encase a basketball and table tennis inspired installation. The more you ogle, the more you understand Oscar’s tongue-in-cheek ideas – like EPE foam used for fruits turns into a basketball net and shadow cast on the tennis court window all day and night. If anyone’s counting, these #HermèsWindows get extra points for awesomeness.
Got flashbacks of elaborate traps you’ve only seen in cartoons.. and an unexplainable urge to fiddle with the scene? That’s exactly what Oscar wants you to feel. “Yes, it’s a tension scene! I thought of the windows as a film and asked myself where would I cut the film to freeze the tension,” he smiles. Like watching Wimbledon on the tele and pausing mid-serve…
If you look up Oscar’s creations, we bet they’ll draw a smile on your face – a calendar that absorbs colour from a bottle, a pepper mill that looks like a minimalistic wind-up doll, Muji mats for children depicting animals eaten by other animals (it sounds scary but it’s education and legit cute) and more.
How the fudge-muffin is he so cheerful and spirited, especially in a dreary world like ours? Is it hard? Teach us, master. “Yes and no. It’s hard at first but everything get easier when you do it more often. Like meeting someone for the first time is always a bit awkward, before you get comfortable. After some time, it just flows. For me, there’s no off switch,” he explains. Game point, Diaz…
Playing Lines by Oscar Diaz for Hermès, till 26 Nov 2018, 541 Orchard Road, Liat Tower, Singapore 238881
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