Looking Beyond

Every adventure begins with a singular desire: to see what lies beyond. When Japanese artist Michiko Tsuda visited Yonaguni Island in the farthest southwest corner of Japan in the summer of 2025, she wielded her camera as a tool for capturing unexpected moments and chance encounters.

Designed by Tsuda, the two storefront window displays depict the moment when one hears the call to “venture beyond”—this year’s Hermès theme. In the window on the right, Tsuda installed a scene of wild horses roaming the Yonaguni landscape against a backdrop of the sea and sky. It is surrounded by a fence with a single gap through which passersby can peer through—a concept designed to stir the imagination about the unknown world that lies beyond, just waiting to be discovered. Upon moving to the left-hand window, they will see items that suggest souvenirs brought back from a journey, objects that inspire visions of future travels, and—on a monitor in the back—themselves, peering into the right-hand window less than a minute before. Moving back and forth between the two windows is akin to travelling through time and space, a rare opportunity to see our past selves and observe how we examine everyday life.

Within the windows, various mechanisms—windows, videos, and mirrors, as well as a picture frame formed from a Horse Splas’H carré designed by Anne-Margot Ramstein—serve to direct the viewer’s gaze. With carré scarves folded into ships and waves, and bracelets and rings transformed into bubbles dotting an underwater scene, Hermès objets become part of a series of landscapes. There is also an R.M.S cabin suitcase in taurillon Regate leather, positioned as the bridge between the everyday world and a world still waiting to be traversed. 

The 16 small windows contain images and objects whose positions shift and overlap depending on where the visitors stands. The effect is to make the viewer feel as if they are inside those worlds despite being outside of them, ushering the viewer further into the unknown. An adventure begins not with the first step out the door, but with the moment we are seized with the desire to see what lies beyond.