Eyestylist

The Italian brand explores a new deep narrative in its latest campaign – Timeless Memories -, located at Alberto Burri’s Cretto of Gibellina. The campaign was shot by Giovanni De Sandre.

The Cretto of Burri, also known as the Great Cretto, is a dramatic piece of land art in Southern Italy, realized by Alberto Burri. The work lies at the site of the historic centre of Gibellina, a village destroyed in an earthquake, and today remembered in Burri’s immense and permanent ‘cretto’ or crack.

“Selecting the Great Cretto was a choice of values and value,” Simone Favero told Eyestylist. “A pure connection between what Burri wanted to convey in cementing the Gibellina ruins after the earthquake and our putting down roots, even emotional ones, in our every action. We can only grow as a company, as a business, if we define our reasons for doing business in a clear way. For us, the connection with the past, and what every day teaches us, is a fundamental way of putting down roots.”

“Cementing the ruins of a city after an earthquake represents the ‘apotheosis of pointless gestures’. With Timeless Memories we wanted to convey our conviction that these seemingly pointless gestures are necessary,” explained Favero.

This location, and those of past campaigns, have become inherent to the storytelling of the brand and its values: neomadeinitaly, the company’s ethical and historic ties to the land it inhabits; titanium, the concrete material aspect of the product; and credo, the ‘awareness’ of the campaign’s message that, in this case at the Grand Cretto, is not only a transfiguration of images, but also of deep meaning and substance.

“We’re a company and a brand,” says Favero. “Our history and actions as regards production, along with our business choices are all focused around corporate social responsibility. The objective is to bring this theme into the seasonal campaign and amaze people, as we like to do at Blackfin, thereby, for maybe the first time, laying down a subtext which can constitute a milestone in the company’s history. Timeless Memories was welcomed by all…and has far surpassed expectations. It has touched people due to the emotion inspired by the book we have created, resonating mostly because of the choice of a truly intimate, ethical motivation.” For more details about Timeless Memories and the new SS20 eyewear releases, visit www.blackfin.eu

Photography by Mark Borthwick for Mykita: SS 2020

British photographer Mark Borthwick has worked with Mykita through a multitude of campaigns and his latest work for the brand – entitled Light Narratives – illustrates his characteristic unaffacted style and authentic approach with a particularly compelling mood. As storytelling goes, the imagery is perfectly in keeping with the personal aspect of Mykita design, capturing real faces and real glances and expressions in a landscape that is evocative and mesmerising, with wide-open spaces.

Created in a remote area of Portugal, the minimal imagery features deliberate contrasts in close-up portraits, group shots and landscapes, while across some of the photographs are the distinctive pink and lilac movements in light from the sun, a trait that is typical of the style of the photographer. Below: a short ‘behind the scenes’ film from the shoot in Portugal by Mark Borthwick.

The campaign images show frames styles in the Mykita Lite, Decades and No1 Sun collections, in contemporary stainless steel or acetate/steel combinations. In synergy with the photography and the neutral colour palette dominated by blue sky and tan earth, interspersed with flashes of bright crimson fabric, the eyewear designs come in pared down and classical tones of matte silver, champagne gold and black, with some unexpected twists and contrasts in a gentle purple bronze/pink clay combination and a topaz/shiny copper mix. For more information about the new SS20 styles now available at Mykita, visit www.mykita.com