Giant robots greet customers at Korean retailer’s new Galleria flagship store

A new store inside the Houston Galleria is drawing attention on social media for its immersive, unnerving window displays, including a giant animatronic face that blinks and follows people as they walk through the mall.

Gentle Monster, a luxury eyewear company from Korea, is known for its over-the-top retail experiences and outlandish, futuristic displays. The company opened its flagship store in Houston in late May, alongside existing stores in Costa Mesa, CA, San Jose, CA, Los Angeles, and New York City. At 4,800 square feet, the Houston location is the largest in the United States.

Gentle Monster is known for blurring the lines between artistic spaces and retail, with stores that almost look like museums. In Houston, the store's displays include a six-legged, walking mechanical creature called "The Probe" and a giant, round eyeball, complete with a double eyebrow piercing, that blinks. Inside the store, screens display surrealistic films alongside giant wooden sculptures that look like insects, as well as an eight-foot-tall ball of what appears to be mud.

The most eye-catching piece is a nine-foot-tall, hyper-realistic kinetic human face, with human-like skin, eyebrows, and eyelashes, that blinks and makes slight movements in response to shoppers.