Creative spirits

Designer to the stars Kerin Rose Gold says she is celebrating 11 years of a-morir, her creative eyewear, accessories and ‘objets d’art’ business in New York. Photography (above): Sophy Holland

I understand you are celebrating a milestone after a very busy 10 years! What does that feel like and has it been an exciting time for you? The 10th year went by so fast, and the studio has been busy! Believe it or not, we’re on our 11th year. a-morir started casually and took off unexpectedly, it’s been hard to keep track. I kept meaning to plan some sort of celebration or dinner for my closest friends and biggest supporters and I just confirmed an 11th birthday party at the beginning of December. I have also created an online-only collection named after some of my best friends. I’m also preparing for a digital sample sale that include some one of a kind pieces from my archive.

Is all your work in eyewear today? While eyewear is where I started and remains a-morir’s ‘heartbeat’ I’ve had the pleasure of expanding. I had been doing custom crystal work for my big eyewear clients like Rihanna and Lady Gaga, and that half of the business has expanded beyond celebrities to private clients and large corporations. I’ve had the pleasure of working with J.Lo, Missy Elliott, Serena Williams, Cardi B, Lizzo and Halsey on non eyewear projects.

I’m also releasing accessories and art ‘objets’; a-morir started out of things I’d made for myself – which I still do in my free time. When my friends have seen those pieces, they’ve asked to purchase them as well.

One of my favorite recent ventures has been working with clients on custom eyewear pieces. I go back and forth with clients via email; if they are in NYC they come to the studio for a design session. A  week later they get a custom piece shipped to their private address.

What is your fondest memory in the last years? There are many! I suppose highlights include a shout out from Rihanna on TV and being selected by Vogue Italia as a new talent in 2011. Today, every time someone orders one of my pieces online I still get a thrill. I’ve recently launched the first ever bridal eyewear line – it came with a beautiful profile on Vogue.com!

Are you located exclusively in NYC or are you travelling a lot for shows and commissions? I’m lucky that I get to stay in NYC. Nearly all of my creative collaborators and companies I work with are based here. The studio is skilled at shipping our pieces to anyone who isn’t. At the beginning of my career, I was based in a luxury accessories showroom in Europe and moved on to the Paris fashion tradeshows; I was receiving a lot of email inquiries from boutiques around the world and selling to them, but I wasn’t finding buyers at the tradeshows or in showrooms who were interested in what I was doing. Around the same time, I grew tired of doing large collections twice a year and I took a risk and went back to the way I was doing things when I first started; it has been better for me to design when I am inspired and release pieces through my website. I now try to travel just for fun. This leaves me stimulated and invigorated when I return home and get back to work.

How will you celebrate your 11th “company” birthday? With the December party…and a Zine produced with my wonderful husband. It’s a limited edition ‘self published DIY magazine’ to share our story. I see it as a ‘loveletter’ about the last 11 years.

Have you got plans for the next few years that you can talk about or is it top secret? Some things are top secret, but I look forward to finding new ways to push the boundaries of my eyewear, expanding the bridal line, creating more eyewear x jewelry sets, and doing more fun collaborations! I love the teamwork involved in collaboration, and look forward to doing fun things with brands and boutiques that I love. I’ve also finally teamed up with a wonderful lens laboratory who are handling prescriptions for my collection, and that part of the business is taking off. The lenses are beautiful and I’ve had a lot of clients get extraordinary pieces filled in their eyeglass prescription; seeing the frame transformation and how they are worn is a thrill!

What is your focus in your design work today? Tell us about the highlights in the collection for 2019. Now that I’ve gone back to my roots, I’m excited to be experimenting with over the top avantgarde pieces again. One of my most favorite recent designs is the Ayesha. I’ve had the honor of working with Preciosa Components, and am obsessed with their black plated chain. I wanted to make something extravagant out of it and this is what I wound up with! I originally said it has 75 feet of chain, (approx. 25 meters) per piece but I think it may be more. I’ve sold more of those than I have some of my more conservative releases from the same collection.

You are dressing many celebrities. What is the best thing about working closely with celebrities? Superstar celebrities have access to everything in the world – I’ve seen it first hand – knowing that they have chosen to wear something from ­a-morir is flattering because they don’t have to. I’m not giving them anything for free and I’m not paying them for endorsement – they’re doing it because they love the design and trust in my creativity and artistic process. What I do isn’t limited to celebrities, that’s also important; I have a handful of wonderful private clients in NYC and abroad. They tell me what they want and trust me to execute their vision. For more details about a-morir, visit www.a-morir.com / www.amorirprojects.com CN

Behind the Vera Wang eyewear collection is a team of creatives with expertise in colour, shape and the technical precisions of a unique pair of spectacles. Eyestylist asked designer Laura Howard to talk about her approach to luxury product design and her thoughts on trends and choosing a new frame.

How long have you been working with Vera Wang eyewear? I first began working on the Vera Wang runway collection, VWX, in 2014, along with Kenmark’s CCO and Vera Wang optical collection designer, David Duralde. Vera has been fully involved from the beginning, so having all that history there when I started provided some valuable design groundwork and some major expectations to fulfil.

How do you turn Vera’s vision into an eyewear collection? Can you describe the process for each collection. Each season’s runway collection all starts with Vera! She is incredibly passionate about eyewear and spends a lot of time thinking about the point of view she wants her collection to have. We meet with Vera and her team to discuss trends, to gather inspiration and to get a read on her vision for the collection. She’ll often sketch a few ideas for shape or to show the scale and proportion she is looking for. I then take all of that and design many, many concepts for her to review and make further edits. She stays very involved after that by choosing every material, lens and finish for each frame. This collection is truly personal to her and she is creatively connected to each piece.

From a personal point of view, what are your greatest passions in life, and does that impact on your work as a designer ? I have a real need to get out and experience the world. There aren’t many places that I wouldn’t go at least once! The takeaways from travel (even short weekend trips) have a lasting effect on my life and work. Just opening yourself up to new experiences allows for creativity to prosper. Being out in the world is also a reminder that there are faces other than my own. When designing, I obviously try everything on my face, so I constantly have to make sure I don’t end up with a collection that is tailor-made just for me.

Do you think that women are more in tune with the benefits of eyewear styling and choosing styles/colors that are enhancing to the personality. If so, can you give any examples or advise on choosing a frame? I think women have always been in tune with their personal style, but now more than ever, fashionable eyewear is much more accessible. With so many new ways to shop and eyewear being offered at nearly every price tier, women have access to a lot more variety and endless ways to express themselves. With that, I think choosing just one frame is no longer necessary. And I’d say try on EVERYTHING! As designers at Kenmark, we put frames on lots of faces. I would say that most people we fit end up loving something they never would have tried on if we didn’t make them. Toss out the face shape chart and go with your gut!

What can we expect in 2020 in terms of design trends / style/colour trends and how have you interpreted those concepts in the new collections? Metal eyewear is still a very strong trend that I don’t see going anywhere anytime soon. Shapes are trending toward more utility styling with pieces like shields and sports wraps. I think micro sunglasses are slowing down, but a frame on the smaller and thinner side is still going strong. Moving into 2020, I think we’ll start to see acetate creep back in, but in thinner profiles and more translucent colorways. One of the defining features of the Vera Wang collection has been the showcasing of exposed structure, which really lends itself to the growing utilitarian trend. Through a series of prongs and screws, the strength and construction of those pieces are celebrated, not buried within the materials. This styling will be carried forward into the newest collection by creating new shapes in metal that boast this concept.

What is it like to work with a couture designer on a collection, and what have been the most exciting moments for you in your career path so far? Working with someone like Vera Wang, who 30+ years into her career is still at the top of her game, is truly the most fascinating and invigorating experience. I’m incredibly inspired by her sense of self, the strength in her vision and her tenacity as a designer. One of the perks of being around someone like that is that you get a contact high from their energy. Just absorbing her ideas, philosophies and instincts is always time well spent. Seeing your frames walk the runway isn’t too shabby either! For more details about the Vera Wang Collection visit www.kenmarkeyewear.com CN For previous articles about Vera Wang click on the following link: https://www.eyestylist.com/2019/08/deryn-by-vera-wang/

Antwerp is a creative force for emerging young designers. The city is home to avant-garde theo eyewear, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. The lure of Antwerp and its stylish impact convinced German born Vincent Thürstein that The Royal Academy Fashion Department was where he wanted to study. Curiosity about a tribe in the Indian Ocean living apart from outer civilisation, sparked Vincent’s concept for his catwalk collection – Mokushiroku (above image) which in Japanese means apocalypse. In a reimagined post-apocalyptic civilisation, people will be just as prone to need eyewear as we are. Vincent knocked on theo’s door, Serge Bracké responded, and a dynamic collaboration was formed.

Vincent used inspirations from Japanese fisherman, Korean female divers, Rodchenko sculptures, Marcel Breuer and other sources to create his binoculars that bear a similarity to fishermen’s diving goggles. “I wanted to combine natural materials such as horn with metal components for the constructional elements,” said Vincent, “And Serge and I worked on the oxidation processes of the frame surface in the same way as I experimented with fabrics in my collection.”

When Vincent’s fashion silhouettes appeared on the catwalk, the smart details on the outfits and the softly muted but pleasing colour palette gave a reassuring glow. Theo x Vincent eyewear added the finishing touch to Mokushiroku. For more trailblazing eyewear designs visit www.theo.be JG

Independent optical store owner and eyewear expert launches own collection with NA eyewear

Dana Prekopova opened a boutique style optical shop in Slovakia in 2005 – a time when very few independent collections had reached her home town of Bratislava. “The beginnings were not really easy,” she explains. “Slovak clients weren’t well educated about “independent eyewear”. I began to introduce individual pieces gradually.”

The first original, handmade frame collection stocked by IOKO came from French artisan designers Vue dc. “At that time this was a young brand as well and the people behind it seemed to me extraordinary and original. We first met at Opti – the trade fair in Munich, and we immediately had an incredible connection.”

As her business grew, Dana became more and more enthusiastic about unique independent brands and she started to organize events “IOKO Meets…”. “I later started to invite all the independent manufacturers of spectacles we represent in our shop. My idea was supported by the Slovak National Gallery, an incredible place for a presentation of original design and the people behind all brands. For three years we hosted designers like Jason and Karen Kirk, Fréderic Ferrant, Chris and Yoma Mascre, Allan and Bettina Petersen, Sergio Eusebi and Livio Grazziotin, and Veronika Wildgruber, who won the prestigious Silmo d’Or 2017 the same year she was presented at one of our events. Our latest event was dedicated to our new own label. In October 2018 we launched IOKO & NA eyewear – this is a personal passion set up as a small creative start up.”

“IOKO x NA Eyewear is my dream come true” – above, photoshoot featuring the new collaborative collection

Asked to explain her plans with her own line Dana tells the story from the beginning: “I should tell you that Slovakia, after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992, didn’t have any eyewear production or history in this field, on which we might have built or drawn ideas. When we used to be Czechoslovakia, the production of spectacles was located in Czech and there it remained.

The aim of the IOKO events in cooperation with the Slovak National Gallery was to speak not only to the public but also to young designers, who might be interested to start a business in this field. I eventually came across one young ambitious Czech jeweler who decided to produce handmade spectacles under her own brand: NA Eyewear. Connected at first on social media, after some time Dana visited NA’s founder in her studio. “I really wanted to get to know her work and hold the final product in my hands.

I travelled to Prague to meet Nastassia Kahotski Aleinikava and Pavel Kahotski. From that moment I knew that together we could develop a perfect result…and this is when the new IOKO collection was born. This day became one of the most special days of my life, and on the way back I was sitting in the train drawing first proposals for new frames.”

The first IOKO x NA collaborative collection is launched with six models, each one produced with three alternatives, in colour and design. Each frame is exclusively handmade and, in the method used, there is zero waste. The frames are produced in Mazzuccheli’s bio acetate, and presented in an original jewellery box or a compact textile packaging by designer Lea Fekete. “Her works are special because of the textile produced through a special technique of layering wool and silk.” The collection is now available exclusively at IOKO, launched with beautiful portrait imagery featuring Dana herself. For more information visit www.ioko.sk and www.naeyewear.com CN