KATA Eyewear is designed by Blake Kuwahara, a fourth generation Japanese-American who lives and designs in San Francisco.

The Gaia Collection is based on elemental forms found in nature such as twigs, stones and bamboo.

The Ethos Collection takes its  inspiration from the fluidity of movement and the aerodynamic lines of the human body.

Summing up the philosophy of KATA Blake Kawahara states,

“My intent is, in a very subtle way, to bring a sense of artfulness and handcraftmanship to my designs.  Eyewear should enhance, and be an extension of one’s personality- not be a substitute for one.”

Now in their late 30’s, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are well in touch.  The journey to such respect began in 1982, when these young, aspiring designers opened their joint studio.  But it wasn’t until 1985 when the big breaks came; theirs being one of three labels chosen to present a collection in new talents category at the Milan fashion shows.  Their designs represented a new generation of “Made in Italy” and people worldwide started noticing this fresh approach to Italian Fashion with quality and style.

The D&G collection promotes true style, full of Latin sensuality and traditional Sicilian atmosphere.  Acetates features as the predominant materials such as cellu-metal.  Like their clothing, the eyewear styles are a reflection of designers’ lifestyles with an air of freedom and vitality.

  Face a FACE à FACE adopts an innovative approach to eyewear design, largely influenced by modern architecture: through its contribution to human environmental needs, its research for high quality and comfort. Architecture, more than any other discipline, interprets the requirements of the modern man and woman. FACE à FACE incorporates these requirements into a high quality eyewear collection, individual, contemporary, sophisticated.

FACE à FACE is designed for the innovative, active, urban man and woman, who consider their frame as an important part of their look and creative personality. The FACE à FACE client will not wear fancy, outrageous glasses.  He refuses to wear just anybody’s frame.

FACE à FACE frames are totally modern but without aggressiveness.  The designer Alyson Magee has achieved the balance between modernity and sobriety by contrasting materials and colours and perfecting the details: the forms are clean, the lines slender, the colours harmonious. “for us, glasses must be beautiful objects, just like the objects and furniture which adorn our homes and which we like to surround ourselves with.  These objects are quite often designed by architects.  It is more they who have inspired the FACE à FACE collections, in the pureness of lines and association of forms and materials, and not so much fashion.

For FACE à FACE designers,  

            “retro is out, the future of Eyewear lies in modernity”.

In 1923 Louis Lafont opened up the first optical shop, Boutique Lafont, in the very heart of Paris.  Since that time, Lafont has continued to design and sell designer optical products in over 25 countries around the world. 

Lafont believes the underlying common thread of design universe is harmony, which is characterised by dynamism, elegance, fashion and quality.

 “Today’s consumer has an enormous variety of choices,  As a consequence, the consumer can be, and is, more demanding than ever.  The trend of the 1990s is toward simplicity and natural themes.....our objective is to create products that are compatible with current design trends while also bringing harmony to consumer’s own lifestyles.  Achievement of this goal dictates that the products we design are comfortable and of very high quality.”

Nobility and innovation in materials Purity and sobriety of design Quality and technical nature in construction.  

Jil Sander’s style is of a sober, lucid luxury, a pure, clean style that is sharp, subtle and refined. As with her clothing, which one wears and keeps for a long time, Jil Sander’s collection by Alain Mikli reveals all the subtleties of an avant-garde technique to the experienced eyes of experts.

Y o h j i

Yohji Yamamoto is inarguably one of Japan’s most exciting and influential fashion designers.  Along with his compatriot Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto’s work has been instrumental in Japan’s emergence as a new and creative force in the world of Haute couture.

Even more than his clothing designs, however, the Japanese fascination with ‘elegant technology’ is perfectly illustrated by Yamamoto’s line of optical frames, and perfectly complemented by the unsurpassable production quality of Murai, which also produces Jean Paul Gaultier frames.

Yohji Yamamoto on the use of asymmetry in design: “the use of asymmetry in the Yohji Yamamoto line means not only the attractiveness of opposites but the beauty of nature as well.  Symmetry exists in the inorganic world of industry and computer music.  However, the use of asymmetry in Yohji Yamamoto is organic since it completes not only the natural and human pursuit of beauty but also that of the emotional beauty which cannot be expressed by word or music”

Alain Mikli sees both sides of high-fashion eyewear design; after all the 40-something Frenchman trained as an optometrist before he began designing his own eyewear styles.

Fashion eyewear is what Alain Mikli does - and does to perfection. The Mikli concept is based on creating very simple frames with minimilistic shapes; frames that are at the pinnacle of technology. The hallmarks of his frames are simplicity, elegance and refinement.  The classic, well-defined shapes and purity of line which feature in Mikli eyewear, appear to lovers of pure, understated style.