Studio Idaë and designers Isabelle Daëron and Elise Teiller call on the ineffable pangs of memory to create a fantastical window display for Hermès Japan.

The extravagant scenario depicts France’s Faubourg boutique and gardens and the Madeleine district, “recomposed from remarkable elements.”

Studio Idaë singles out a stone facade, wrought iron balustrade, and staircase/lighting fixtures as specific items artfully re-imagined here, but “Memory Palace” is rather a world unto itself than it is a signifier of disparate things.

Very like a Wes Anderson film—or a novel by Haruki Murikami— the scene invites complete immersion, as if its witness might morph into one with the contents and their implied universe, passing through an unbroken window and into the pixellated technicolor of strange and wonderful dreams…

…Trees made from the mossy gradations of sun-bleached tennis balls, fountains spouting perfect puffs of cotton, and ochre horses, pencil thin, beset by a whirling malestrom yet still compelled to finish the race.

Cervantes said that “all comparisons are odious,” but, just for kicks, here are some images of the factual location.

Which would you prefer to inhabit?

See more at Studio Idaë.