Hermes x StudioXAG: Lightness

In response to Hermes’ theme of the year,  Lightness, we explored various interpretations of the word – weightlessness, tranquillity, even effortlessness – then finally luminosity. But what does a story about light look like? It may feel abstract, but simply put; light is how we see colours.

This inspired us to imagine lightness as an artist who paints colours to everything we see in the universe.  To ensure the flow of the narrative we imagined the windows as chapters of a story, with the product as actors in the scenography, plucking pigments from the sun and painting them across the earth.

Through her travels, Lightness encounters Hermès products that are playfully woven into the story of each window; bracelets become smoke rings, gloves form the solar wings that power a spacecraft, and a silk tie trails from the engines of a space rocket. Each scene reinterprets unique pieces of the collection to reinforce Lightness’ whimsical voyage of discovery, with satellites, telescopes and the sweep of a rocket’s tail all pointing toward Lightness as they paint.

Lightness appears across Hermés’ Amsterdam, Brussels, Oslo, Luxembourg, Knokke, and Stockholm stores, with a variety of creative solutions appearing in each location. There’s one store that goes above and beyond, though.

With 12 individual windows, Hermès’ Copenhagen store is a sight to behold. Here, we chose to include unique additions to Lightness’ adventures underpinned by unexpected, creative manifestations of many products.

In one instance, Lightness inspects the trail of a strange Alien that’s left a trail of footprints on a freshly painted planet, “who could that have been?” they wonder. In another, they fill in the indents left by a space rover with her colours, and in another, an accidental spillage of pigments from Lightness’ flying bike creates a dazzling galaxy filled with colour.

The project takes a broad-ranging theme and distils this into a single powerful artistic direction that invites passers-by into the wondrous world of Hermès.