Spatial social platform ZOME appoints acclaimed designer Hussein Chalayan MBE as Creative Director

World-first project for augmented reality pioneer ZOME sees launch of exclusive curated content geolocated at 700+ airports worldwide

London, UK, February 5^th 2025 – ZOME, the Spatial Social Platform and Location-Based Message Capsule app company, today announces that acclaimed British-Cypriot artist and fashion designer Hussein Chalayan MBE has been appointed as Creative Director. Chalayan’s first project for the pioneering spatial technology platform is the curation of a world-first augmented reality (AR) content collection geolocated at every major airport worldwide - over 700 sites. The ZOME x Hussein Chalayan Airport Capsules – featuring exclusive videos and prose by the designer – can be discovered now by downloading the ZOME app on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The collection also includes a Celestial Capsule that anyone anywhere in the world can access by simply pointing their smartphones or devices directly at the real-time position of the moon using the ZOME app.

Available for Apple (including Apple Vision Pro) and Android devices, ZOME is a new Spatial Social Platform that allows brands, artists and individuals to share and access geolocated and time-based ZOME Message Capsules anywhere in the world – and even attach custom content to the sun, moon, planets and constellations. Through the company’s patented technologies, each Message Capsule can be placed in any desired location(s) and include multiple content types, from 3D models, spatial video and images to audio and text. Location-Based Message Capsules encourage users to explore the physical world around them, while Time-Based Message Capsules can be geolocated to appear (or disappear) at set times in the future – opening up a wealth of possibilities for creating unique immersive experiences at key locations and events for both business applications and personal projects.

From individuals publishing music, art and writing anywhere around the globe in space and time, to brands, museums and festivals placing targeted and content-rich information especially for consumers and visitors, ZOME offers the potential to unlock the augmented reality realm for millions of people and businesses worldwide based on a fully networked and connective social platform. ZOME has already hosted specially created spatial Message Capsules in highlight projects delivered for NASA, Dover Street Market, the music artists Raye and Duran Duran, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

ZOME offers patented spatial network features for Android and Apple smartphones and tablets plus the latest Apple Vision Pro spatial computing wearable device – an immersive mixed reality headset that seamlessly blends digital content with users’ physical space. ZOME is the first spatial social network to launch on Apple Vision Pro, and the app developer is one of Apple’s earliest launch partners for its next-generation mixed reality technology platform.

Commenting on the collaboration with ZOME, Hussein Chalayan said:

“I am delighted to join ZOME as its Creative Director. With a focus on the intersection of design, technology, and human experience, I believe my interdisciplinary background and expertise will make a meaningful contribution to the platform.

What draws me to ZOME is its unique ability to merge art, innovation, and everyday life, offering a fresh perspective on how we can experience creativity. Spatial design moves beyond the confines of traditional settings, allowing concepts to be experienced in real time, not just observed within a gallery setting. ZOME creates a space where ideas naturally evolve, transforming everyday moments into immersive, interactive experiences. Positioned at the crossroads of storytelling, space, and technology, ZOME is pioneering a future where art seamlessly integrates into our daily environments, enriching and reshaping how we engage with the world around us”.

Twice awarded British Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council, Chalayan is one of the most visionary multi-disciplinary designers in fashion, known for his innovative use of materials and integration of cutting-edge technologies – from animatronics to multimedia arts. His work has been exhibited at the V&A and Design Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He was awarded an MBE in Her Majesty the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2006 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the fashion industry.

ZOME founder and CEO Theodore Wohng added:

“It is an incredible honour to be working together with Hussein Chalayan, at the forefront of technology, innovation and design. Hussein is a true artistic visionary who has consistently pushed the boundaries of cross-disciplinary creativity. It is extremely exciting to be launching this inaugural Spatial Capsule project, which is now available for people to discover at airports around the world.

We are thrilled that Hussein has come on board as Creative Director of ZOME, to help steer our mission as we further develop our technology, and deliver this breakthrough spatial social platform—enabling people to imagine, create and be everywhere, without limitation or geographical boundaries.”

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To access ZOME’s full Media Assets – including airport content collection images, Apple Vision Pro visuals and ZOME logos – please visit our dedicated Press Portal:

https://zome.app/press

Note To Editors

About the ZOME X Hussein Chalayan Airport Collection

This new ZOME Airport Capsule collection is the culmination of an ambitious collaboration between legendary British-Cypriot fashion designer Hussein Chalayan and ZOME CEO and Founder Theodore Wohng, a software entrepreneur and art collector. The foundational concept is an innovative cultural investigation of the philosophical potential of ‘non-places’, exploring their ambivalent state harnessing next-generation spatial/AR technologies.

The term ‘non-place’ was first coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé in his seminal 1995 work Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of super-modernity to describe anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous and disconnected, such as airports, hotel rooms and shopping malls. In Augé’s definition, non-places do not hold enough significance to be regarded as ‘places’ in the anthropological sense, and are spaces where typical considerations of relationships, history and identity are erased.

Hussein first explored Augé’s philosophy of non-places in his celebrated AW03 menswear collection, Place/Non-Place. Taking a conceptual focus on aviation, travel and airports as its starting point, Hussein’s influential designs examined his ideas around temporarily transforming a non-place into a place, and the displaced into the placed. This latest collaboration with ZOME marks a further development of these pivotal concepts within the context of Hussein’s creative culture, which has long encompassed a fascination with the anthropology of flight and transactional spaces (notably reflected in his landmark 2004 film Anaesthetics).

ZOME x Hussein Chalayan Collection:

Turning a ‘non-place’ into a Temporary Place of Contemplation.

This capsule is about transforming the often-isolating experience of non-places in airports into engaging, interactive spaces, engaging with notions of perception of Non-Places whilst contemplating the prose each location will generate.

1. Never Left (Airport Capsule)

Airports are borders which attempt to create a feeling of never leaving a place, exposing us to shopping and entertainment in the terminal and continuing that in the aeroplane. This prose is to help embrace anticipation of flight as a transitional condition to be enjoyed rather than taken over by a numbing sense of entertainment.

I am here, momentarily
Imminently, I’ll merge with the jet streams
I’ll find distractions that will become barriers
But I can let go and tune in

As I await the impermeable shift
I feel my fear masked by worldly comforts
In the midst of feeling numb.
Let turbulence remind me of discomfort

I will land and carry on, as if I never left
I was there, momentarily

2. Currency for Infiltration (Airport Capsule)

Travellers can unlock a series of words exploring the cultural and historical connections created through water. Prose will harness ideas of how rivers have shaped civilizations, trade, and boundaries, flowing between abstract and geographic and political implications of water.

Water flows, a quiet force
A killer, a border yet a bond
Seeping through, it blurs the line

A currency for infiltrating lands and hearts.
Lethal embrace, a breath away
Borders blend, divides erased

A danger, yet a bond all along

3. Ghost of the Sand (Celestial/Moon Capsule)

A portal for contemplation, inviting one to explore a sense of disembodiment, drifting across the luminous surface of the moon or perhaps another planetary sphere. This disembodiment softens the boundaries of consciousness, allowing it to blur into an alternate dimension of reality, where perception expands, and reality loosens its hold.

As ghost of the sand I float along
Corporeal or mist, confused but content
From the world below – long lost trace
Soaring in auto awareness
I fasten my ghost to a drifting force
Movement is my home

4. Sorrow to dust (Celestial/Moon Capsule)

A portal for contemplation about the meaninglessness of
worries when looked at from outer space.

Sharp worries softened here

Echoes fade in silence

Small battles turn to smoke

Sorrows shrink to flickering lights

Doubts and worries turn to solar dust …….

About ZOME (https://zome.app/)
ZOME is a new Spatial Social Platform and Location-Based Messenger app that allows brands, artists and individuals to share and access geolocated ZOME Message Capsules anywhere in the world – and even attach custom content to the sun, moon, planets and constellations. The augmented reality (AR) / spatial app is available for Apple and Android devices plus the latest Apple Vision Pro spatial computing wearable device.

Each Message Capsule can be placed in any desired location and include multiple content types, from 3D models, spatial video and image to audio and text. Location-based Message Capsules encourage users to explore the physical world around them, while Time-Based Message Capsules can be geolocated to appear (or disappear) at set times in the future – opening up a wealth of possibilities for creating unique immersive experiences at key locations and events for both business applications and personal projects.

From individuals publishing music, art and writing anywhere around the globe in space and time, to brands, museums and festivals placing targeted and value-added information especially for visitors, ZOME offers the potential to unlock the augmented reality realm for millions of people and businesses worldwide based on a fully networked and connective social platform.

PRESS CONTACTS for ZOME:
Nicky Denovan, EvokedSet PR
Email: nicky[at]evokedset[dot]com
Phone: +44 (0) 118 9899788