The Mission:
There are a lot of different ways to approach a window display. Often we here at Taro's Origami Studio are contacted at the beginning of a project and are asked to do some design work, like the project we did for Grand Seiko but in the case of luxury brand Dior we were contacted purely for production work and our paper expertise. The request was for us to take detailed diagrams and schematics that they had already created and make 13 of them with extreme precision and on a short timeline. It was a challenge we were excited to accept and we are quite proud of the results.
Prep Work:
To get started we tested a slew of options for the hot air balloons that Dior asked us to create. It included everything from test folding a bunch of papers to make sure they would work, machine cutting out precise parts, test knotting the netting, sourcing the correct ridged internal structures, and creating a scale model they could inspect in Paris. After about a weeks worth of worth, we were approved for the entire batch and got to work.
Full Scale Production:
All told the final request was for 13 hot air balloons of 2 different sizes and varying depths, 2 blimps, and a pair of bi-planes. It took about 2 weeks to get all the parts produced on our machine scoring tool and another week to hand knot all of the netting that would go over the balloons. Dior also has a very specific color palate and aesthetic so we had to have all of the paper custom printed to their exact CMYK color and went through about 12 different string options to find the right satin finished string. Once the paper arrived, we went into production, but each window display had different dimensions, so we also created a new system to build the balloons down to 3/4 diameter so that they would fit in the display windows as needed.
Final Delivery:
With about two hours left to go we finished packing the models to be shipped across the country for display in various Beverly Hills storefronts. In order to ensure that they models arrived in style a specialty delivery service was called in to hand deliver everything in pristine condition. It was a lot of fine detailed work, but as always the team here at the origami studio was excited to see the final models on display across the country.
