By Cedie Lazaro
Walking past the Hermès Maison in Shanghai right now, you might expect to see the usual: pristine leather, gleaming hardware, and the kind of ultra-exclusive luxury that feels lightyears away from everyday life. Instead, you are greeted by something shockingly familiar, humble, and beautifully raw: corrugated cardboard balikbayan boxes.
In a brilliant creative twist, acclaimed Filipino artist duo Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan have taken over the flagship’s windows for their Autumn 2026 installation, titled “Portals: The Passage of Time.” The result? A fascinating, head-turning clash of two entirely different worlds.
From the Cargo Ship to the Luxury Window
For millions of Filipinos, the balikbayan box is a sacred object. It is a utilitarian cardboard container packed with love, canned goods, and hand-picked gifts, sent across oceans by overseas workers to the families they left behind. It is the ultimate symbol of migration, hard work, and the bittersweet reality of building a home from afar.
Now, look at Hermès. It is a brand built on the pinnacle of exclusive, permanent craftsmanship—think meticulously stitched Birkin bags and silk scarves meant to be passed down through generations.
By placing raw, taped-up cardboard side-by-side with thousand-dollar luxury goods, the Aquilizans pull off a spectacular artistic irony. They take an object engineered entirely for leaving and sending, and transform it into an intricate, permanent architectural landscape meant for staying and admiring.
Elevating the Ordinary
The installation itself is a marvel of hand-cut detail. The Aquilizans have sculpted the cardboard into surreal floating structures, stacked miniature houses, and even equestrian forms—a nod to Hermès’ historic horse-drawn carriage heritage.
What makes it work so well is that the artists didn’t try to make the cardboard look polished. You can still see the raw stamps, the jagged edges where the boxes were sliced, and the rough layers of paper. Nestled inside these cardboard alcoves are the pristine, flawless textures of Hermès leather and silk.
It forces you to pause and rethink what “value” actually means. Is a piece of art valuable because it’s made of expensive leather, or because of the immense human story, time, and labor poured into shaping it?
The Art of the Journey
This collaboration works so beautifully because it isn’t just a corporate marketing gimmick. Hermès’ annual theme happens to be “Venture Beyond,” a concept that perfectly mirrors the Aquilizans’ lifelong obsession with travel, fluid boundaries, and what happens to our sense of identity when we move across the globe.
By bringing the humble cardboard box to one of the most elite fashion capitals in the world, the artists have done something incredible. They’ve proven that the symbols of working-class grit and global migration deserve a spot in the finest windows on earth—reminding every passerby that the journeys we take, and the baggage we carry, are the most valuable things of all.
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