Photographer and director Idan Barazani showcases Xander Zhou’s futuristic Autumn/Winter 2020 collection in a preternatural new film. The New York-based director takes the fashion label’s aesthetic of “techno-orientalism” and shoots it into hyperspace in an advert for a vacation like no other.

Emotion Inn opens with guests checking into a Japanese hotel and enjoying the facilities; the tatami gym, dining hall, onsen and Kabuki theater are of Japanese extraction, but the disturbing activities that take place within are born of a more chilling realm.

Working with Taka Arakawa on the creative direction, Barazani converges pan-Asian culture onto surrealist structures to create a film that pushes against our visual comfort zone. Together, they fracture reality with visions of moving body parts, a radioactive sauna, and dualistic guests who are two halves of the same disturbing whole. Barazani masterfully brings the designer’s vision of a disjointed world to life in a unique film that makes harmony look like conflict and symmetry appear grotesque.

Xander Zhou’s designs are a manifestation of his fascination with multiple selves and the idea that they might exist in parallel universes. He decided to coin the term “homo multiversalis” as a way to compound the iterations of a single person.

“Because of COVID-19 and restrictions on travel, I wanted to create a virtual vacation advertisement,” says the designer. “The film was inspired by ideas of space, different dimensions, how many ‘yous’ there are and how many personalities you have.”

One of the most striking characters in the film is the Butoh dancer—a practitioner of a style of Japanese dance that focuses on detailed movement, intentional stillness and heightened tension. “He uses dance as a form of language,” says Xander Zhou. “He doesn’t need to speak or form any connection with people. He has a mysterious power.” A power that seems to transcend consciousness and material form.

Emotion Inn holds memories of an old world trying to be preserved in a new and never-ending space. It is affected by Xander Zhou’s work and aesthetics, inspired by the future and the tech world, and imagines an evolved dimension that combines them all.