Panayiotis Terzis’s collaboration with Hermès

Panayiotis Terzis, the director and co-founder of the SVA RisoLAB, recently collaborated with Heavy Eyes Studio to create window displays for Hermès stores across the United States.

The displays are inspired by the motif of large geometric faces that frequently make appearances in Pan’s prints and paintings. Pan’s statement on the project and more images below.

I was contacted by Kathleen Scudder towards the end of the summer of 2023 about this project. She’s the founder and owner of Heavy Eyes Studio, a Brooklyn based design studio that specializes in 3D displays for many clients including Hermes. The theme of the 2024 Hermes window displays was slated to focus on the brand’s iconic headquarters at 24 Rue de Faubourg in Paris.

The first part of the project involved creating a concept that Heavy Eyes would pitch to Hermes, which if accepted would be refined and fabricated by a separate team to roll out at Hermes stores across the country. My concept “sketches” ended up being fully realized illustrations, which contained enough ideas that we decided to split them into two unique pitches. I banged them out over two weeks of intense studio sessions, handed them off to Heavy Eyes, and waited.

After months of silence, Kathleen reached out to share the news that Hermes loved the work and concepts, but ultimately wanted us to go with something that was even closer to my own work. They were specifically enthralled with a series of drawings and prints that I had previously published under my publishing imprint Mega Press. The process that followed involved several lightning rounds of drawings and revisions. My challenge was to re-configure the pieces that caught the eye of Paris to fit the theme without losing any of spirit of the originals.

I sent off the final concept sketches, and they were then translated into 3D models that were then used by two separate fabrication teams to build the sculptures. The windows were installed in early February at all Hermes stores across the country in varying combinations of the three monumental heads designed in collaboration with Heavy Eyes, along with a series of smaller windows derived from my designs. The work is on view at stores across the country, from NYC to Denver, Chicago to Boston, Beverly Hills to Aventura, Florida, and scores more. In New York, this project can be seen at the Meatpacking and Wall Street locations through the first week of May.

It’s been incredible seeing a project that worked intensively on in short bursts over the Fall of 2023 emerge from my studio and computer screen as a series of gigantic heads occupying dozens of window displays of one of the top international luxury brands. The fact that the work that sold my concept was from Riso printed zines and print editions is also extremely validating. It’s another reminder that no matter what artists have to do to survive, in the long run if you stay true to your own vision and never compromise, the right project will come to you.