“Hermès is a superb buddy of time,” Gregoris Pyrpylis says on an October afternoon, backed by a low-slung mountainscape and watercolor blue sky—the type of primordial vista that appears extra doubtless a part of a CGI journey movie than a site-specific make-up launch. Pyrpylis, the artistic director of Hermès Magnificence, is standing at one finish of the Invisible Home, a glass-walled marvel designed to vanish into the encircling Mohave Desert. In his hand, propped open like a pocket watch, is an eye fixed shadow compact from the home’s new Le Regard assortment. Time, on this palm-size context, has a mess of resonances. There’s the regular descent of the solar, its gentle bouncing off the powders’ delicate shimmers. There’s the historic nod to Bauhaus design ideas, urged by the compact’s use of circles and squares. There’s endurance too: a souvenir meant to be refilled, signaling an extended lifespan for the thing and, in existential phrases, past. Pyrpylis, a Greek native based mostly in Paris, has a poetic means of talking about such elemental topics as time and commentary. “The facility of the gaze accommodates every little thing,” he tells an assembled group, earlier than portray sweeps of teal onto a mannequin’s lids. “We are able to make individuals see issues in a different way. We are able to draw a brand new perspective.”
To launch a make-up assortment on the Invisible Home, after all, invitations contradiction. The house, designed by Tomas Osinski with movie producer (and unique proprietor) Chris Hanley, has an eye catching means of receding from view. It stakes a declare in rugged nature whereas serving as a high-brow temple for selfies. The imposing rectilinear construction resembles a skyscraper reclined in odalisque pose—acceptable for a spot that’s ogled from the skin whereas permitting sly voyeurism from inside. Its photogenic enchantment isn’t misplaced on a model like Hermès. (Right here, the 100-foot indoor pool has been reworked right into a minimalist set up of mirrors and make-up, a Narcissan temptation.) However the Invisible Home’s inherent twin nature—understatement butting up in opposition to look-here attraction—fittingly units the stage for a make-up vary that stokes pleasure without having to shout.
Le Regard encompasses three pillars: the shadow compacts, provided in six variations; a set of coloured mascaras; and brushes dressed up in lacquered stripes. “I’m not going to lie: I’m a really ‘eye’ individual,” Pyrpylis tells me the next morning, sitting fireplace on the Parker Palm Springs. He’s confessing to a little bit of favorite-playing in relation to the merchandise below his area. “I do have this concept that we converse with the mouth,” he presents—an allusion to the fawned-over lipsticks that heralded Hermès Magnificence’s arrival in 2020—“however the eyes say every little thing.”
