Dover Street Market Paris presents a powerful new art installation in its courtyard: The Church of Our Becoming, an evocative body of work by multidisciplinary artist Yulia Mahr. Running from July 24th to August 24th, 2025, the exhibition redefines classical ideals and invites a bold reimagining of beauty, identity, and embodiment.
Mahr’s series was born from an intense reflection on the afterlife of ancient Greek statuary in the Western imagination. Her work questions how classical ideals—muscular, virtuous males and passive, sensual females—have shaped modern concepts of gender, beauty, and worth. Rather than rejecting these forms, she fractures them, allowing new visions to emerge.
Mahr’s installation coincides with the launch of Comme des Garçons Parfum’s newest fragrance, Max Richter 01, for which the artist also created original packaging artwork—further blending scent, image, and emotion into a single immersive experience.
Reimagining ideals with Comme des Garçons Parfum
At the heart of The Church of Our Becoming is a series of thermal portraits, captured using military-grade imaging technology. These images trace heat—radiance—across a diverse range of human bodies: trans, non-binary, fluid, or not identifying at all. By working with this intimate visual language, Mahr shifts the focus away from rigid external identities toward a luminous spectrum of presence and being.
This project runs parallel to the conceptual essence of Comme des Garçons Parfum, whose collaborations often challenge convention and provoke deep sensory reflection. The fragrance Max Richter 01, launched alongside the installation, shares this ethos—uniting sound, memory, and scent in an exploration of emotional architecture.
