Their fourth collaboration, 68 styles of crushed and reshaped eyewear, arrives October 29.
Maison Margiela and Gentle Monster are back for a fourth round. The new collection, out Thursday, October 29, is built around a single idea: deconstruction. Familiar eyewear shapes are elevated, while others are deliberately distorted.
The collection
The lineup includes 43 sunglasses and 25 optical frames, 68 SKUs in total. The language of the collaboration is a series of deconstructed styles in which elements look crushed and modified. Oversized frames with exaggerated volume hide the face from onlookers while widening the wearer’s own field of vision. At the other end of the range, narrow, upswept frames come wrapped tightly in leather, in the manner of the house’s Second Skin.
The Maison Margiela signature runs through the whole range at the temples: the four white stitches. On slim styles, a new branding detail appears, with the stitches woven as if floating over the edges of the frame.
The campaign
The campaign short film is directed by Alex Prager and finds the extraordinary in uncanny everyday moments. A woman has just ten minutes to meet someone, and we follow her as she rushes across the city. The eyewear silhouettes appear through the characters she passes along the way, in a world that keeps shifting around her.
Pop-ups in eight cities
To mark the launch, pop-up spaces open on October 29 in eight cities. Each extends the deconstruction concept into architecture, with an unfinished aesthetic expressed through unstable, irregular forms.
- Seoul: Haus Nowhere Seoul, Ttukseom-ro, Seongdong-gu
- Tokyo: Aoyama FS, Minamiaoyama, Minato City
- Shanghai: Haus Nowhere Shanghai, Mid-HuaiHai Rd., Huangpu District
- Beijing: Taikoo Li FS, Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District
- Bangkok: Haus Nowhere Bangkok, ICONSIAM
- Kuala Lumpur: The Exchange TRX
- Melbourne: Gentle Monster, Chadstone Shopping Centre
- Paris: Marais FS, rue Vieille du Temple
A performance in Seoul
Seoul also hosts an exclusive launch performance. Choreographer and creative director Damien Jalet and artist Ian McMahon translate deconstruction into movement. Body, space, object and light collide and reshape one another, taking apart existing structures and relationships to rebuild them in new forms.
About the brands
Gentle Monster is a global fashion eyewear brand known for experimental, sophisticated collections, and for spaces and campaigns that carry that sensibility beyond the product. Maison Margiela, founded in Paris in 1988, is an unconventional luxury couture house that treats the silhouette as a field of study and questions convention through an emphasis on construction and technique.
