Zeitgeist of the Future: MYKITA Eyewear

Unlikely Inspiration

Origami – we’ve heard of this as a source of inspiration for dress designs, but never for sunglasses.

But this is the key idea behind MYKITA, a Berlin-based eyewear company that breaks the mold in the eyewear market, literally and figuratively.  The company is the brainchild of four German friends, Moritz Krueger, Philipp Haffmans, Daniel Haffmans, and Harald Gottschling, who joined together to create a well-known product in innovative ways by finding new materials and technical solutions.

“We tried to create a concept, which works like the Japanese principle of Origami, so just with folding and bending you’re creating the concept for the eyewear and that was the starting point of our first collection,” says Phillip.

Constant Discovery

MYKITA was founded in 2003 and was named after the kindergarten in which their first office space was formed—the word ‘Kita’ is the abbreviation of the German word Kindergärten, and the MY- added to the beginning of the name makes it mean ‘my kindergarten.’

According to MYKITA’s mission statement, the company seeks to bring forth a new, modern product that is perceived as something completely different form the products that precede it—instead of replicating eyewear through tried-and-true methods, they seek to constantly experiment with new materials and construction methods.

MYKITA’s unique designs first caught my eye when I stumbled upon a cobalt blue pair in a small boutique while walking the streets of Paris.  The frames felt light as a feather and as if they were all part of one seamless piece. In fact, as I picked up the lenses in awe, I worried how breakable the lenses would be given how delicate they felt in my hand.

A pair of MYKITA sunglasses similar to the ones I saw in Paris. Pick up a pair of these and you'll be surprised to see they weigh next to nothing!

As it turns out, MYKITA’s frames are made of titanium and feature a hingeless design that trumps the need for screws and welded joints, making them virtually unbreakable. The leader of this innovative approach was likely to Philipp Haffmans, who began his career by studying industrial design in 1992.

He explains, “during my studies we started to deal with optical, and experimenting with frames, and this is how the flattening concept arrived.” By doing so, he claims, “we are bringing to eyewear … a perception of modern product, not a replica of something that has already existed.”

Printable Eyewear

So, if the founders of MYKITA never want to replicate the old, what’s next for the company? Well, MYKITA recently released its newest line, MYKITA MYLON, which is a line of eyewear designed specifically to converge athletics and fashion in a revolutionary way.

The material of the glasses claims to boast “individual adjustability, low weight and extreme durability” with its unique production through Selective Laser Sintering. The method involves layering a superfine powder and transforming it into a three-dimensional object through carbon dioxide laser sintering. So, in short, these sunglasses are made of powder! [see video below for more].

In fact, this method is actually a form of 3D printing, so their claims for ‘individual adjustability’ mean that the buyer can buy their own 3D printed pair of glasses, custom-fit to their face. The idea is so revolutionary that it has earned the company an iF material award and a Red Dot design award for product design.

Presentation is Key

Finally, MYKITA’s founders don’t stop with their product design to make their company one of the most innovative accessories brands yet—they even design their shops with a unique architectural sense to specifically complement the design of their frames.

Aimed to achieve an art-installation feel, these shops feature contrasting materials like perforated steel, all-white walls, and neon storefronts. Currently, the ever-growing MYKITA has shops in Berlin, Paris, Monterrey, Cartagena, Zurich, Vienna, Tokyo, and, as of late July, New York—their first entrance into U.S. territory. After gaining exposure to the U.S. market, this European gem is sure to be big.

Mykita's Tokyo store interior is almost as beautiful as the products themselves.

Humberto Leon and Carol Lin: Rebels with a Cause

 

Humberto Leon and Carol Lin, co-founders of Opening Ceremony and directors of fashion awesomeness

Wintour Optional

If The Devil Wears Prada taught us anything, it’s this: Working in the world of fashion is fiercely cutthroat. Climbing the ladder rungs to the top of luxury fashion houses like Louis Vuitton and Valentino and working for large corporations like Vogue is a tedious and often discouraging process. Finding a position that offers any true influence over the fashion industry can take years of “dirty work” jobs and massive amounts of luck. But for people who are willing to take the risk, power and autonomy can come at a much lower cost.

In fact, for innovators like Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, a little risk-taking and creativity has given them the ability to do much more than giant fashion houses do. As the co-founders of Opening Ceremony, they run a worldwide fashion company that not only holds a huge stake in deciding which designs are “hot” among fashionistas, but also cultivates new designers from around the world.

Their work bringing Opening Ceremony into being has led them to chief creative director positions for the much-loved fashion label Kenzo. By establishing themselves and gaining respect for being free-spirited risk-takers in the fashion world, they now can quite literally do anything they want and know it will be respected.

A D.I.Y. Business

Eleven years ago, Leon and Lin began as college classmates bored with their jobs in corporate fashion. After quitting their jobs and pooling their small savings accounts together, Leon and Lin brought their vision to life. After having an SUNY draft them a business plan for free, the two opened a boutique in downtown New York.

But the two knew they wanted to integrate their love for travel as well as art into their work, which led Opening Ceremony to becoming much more than another store in New York City. The duo had always known they wanted to integrate their love for travel and art into whatever they did, and after being inspired by a past trip to Hong Kong, they curated the boutique’s offerings with their favorite designers discovered on the trip as well as homemade items made by their mothers. The idea behind the product offering, Leon claims, is that "we'd stock [the stores] with things we would have brought back anyway as gifts"--souveniring to the max, if you will. 

The business soon became a platform for showcasing international designers by featuring a new country every year. Not only did they discover a new way to bring undiscovered international designers into the limelight, but they also enabled their fashionista following to start seeing fashion on a global scale.

Prada, Nada

The pair continued to push limits in more ways than one—though their business is undoubtedly upscale, they weren’t afraid to follow their whims and integrate affordable products into their offering. Believe it or not, the founders of Opening Ceremony are also responsible for the wide popularity of the Havaianas flip-flop.

Leon explains, “when we were in Brazil, we stumbled across a supermarket that sold these plastic flip-flops … Carol and I were obsessed.” They filled their grocery carts full of the sandals and began researching how they could import the brand into the U.S. At the time, Havaianas didn’t have the infrastructure to create and sell large amount of their shoes to other countries, but thanks to Opening Ceremony, they are now sold across the globe. Is that something Prada could get away with? I think not.

Colorful Prospects 

Though they’ve now reached the same status as many luxury brands in the industry, two still haven’t ceased to show their wild sides: as creative directors of Kenzo, they collaborated with the trendy Parisian juice bar, Bob’s Juice Bar, to create “fruit carpet” made out entirely out of bananas, lemons, strawberries, and more for their Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear show. Guests were invited to sample fruit directly from the carpet, and the rest was donated to the Red Cross after the show.

Kenzo's fruit carpet made an impact at the Spring/Summer '14 menswear show in more ways than one. 

Next, at New York Fashion Week, Leon and Lin set up their own pop-up market called Opening Ceremony BTW (by the water) at Pier 57 to supplement their first show for Opening Ceremony’s new in-house line. The market featured fashion and food vendors hand-picked by the two themselves. Clearly, Lin and Leon have ‘tailored’ their work in the fashion industry to be exactly what they want it to be—who knows what kind of fun they’ll come up with next.

Renzo Rosso: Beyond the Big League

The Agent 

Athletes, actors, models, musicians—they all rely on other businessmen, their agents, to put them on the map. But one thing we forget to consider is how our favorite fashion designers become so popular in their industry. Just like the other guys, fashion designers have businessmen working behind them as agents too.

One such businessman is Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel and owner of his holding group OTB (short for Only The Brave). Responsible for the popularity of Maison Martin Margiela, Marni, and Viktor & Rolf, along with his own $3 billion fortune built from inventing the ‘distressed’ Diesel jean, Rosso spends his time scouting for new talent in the fashion world.

Always on the lookout, Rosso seeks designers with promise by analyzing their work for signs of megabrand potential. And Rosso knows how to take these brands to the top—now famously donned by Kanye West and Jay-Z, the fashion brand Margiela went from stagnant and struggling to expand in 2001 to a $100 million powerhouse today, all thanks to Rosso.  

While Rosso’s vested-in “babies” craft high fashion clothing and accessories, Rosso has crafted his business in an equally creative manner. He has sought out and worked with labels from every end of the spectrum, from the pop-inspired costume and denimwear designer DSquared to the wild and unusual gown designer Vivienne Westwood.

An Innovative Touch

In fact, it was his own calculated efforts that brought Vivienne Westwood designs into what they are today—Rosso explains, “One day we bought a company called Staff International with this incredible know-how in tailoring. We thought that with that knowledge and with the sort of product Diesel already made we could be unique. So we began manufacturing the Vivienne Westwood line.” Now you know whom to thank for the structured blazers and draping mesh layers you saw in Westwood’s ready-to-wear show in Paris last week.

Rosso’s strategy begins with this: “I never select a designer who will be similar to someone who already exists.” Instead of setting his sights on known designers that offer high income and stability, Rosso seeks to develop new talent, and develop new talent he does. Rosso works as consultant to his brands as well as a ‘talent scout’ and investor, most recently for the rising star Maison Martin Margiela. Rosso began by restructuring the label, vertically integrating Staff International to enable in-house design, production, and sales. Rosso then suggested adding a collection of publically consumable items like sneakers, belts, and bags to Margiela’s glamour-injected product offering to help identify the brand’s clean, logo-free, streetstyle-meets-high-style aesthetic. From what we’ve heard from Kanye on the radio, [“What’s that jacket, Margiela?”] Rosso’s vision earned the brand entry into the celebrity world.

Kanye West took a liking to Margiela's bedazzled masks, using the same one seen in the Fall '12 Haute Couture show to make a statement in his 2013 tour performances.

New Competition

Rosso’s clearly paved the runway for several designers in the fashion industry, but he’s not the only one on the hunt for fresh fashion talent—he competes against many of his kind to find new investment projects in the industry, and the competition’s becoming stiff. Giant conglomerates like LVMH, Gucci Group, and Kering are all megabrands that seek to buy out luxury fashion brands, and given their enormous presence in the industry, many say that these three groups run the world of fashion.

What has set Rosso apart from the megabrands in the past comes from the fact that he started his company single-handedly and from the bottom up (growing up on an Italian farm, Rosso made his own fortune when he founded the Diesel brand with Adriano Goldschmied at the age of 23), and his business remains family-owned and private today. While large public groups like LVMH, worth nearly $65 billion, have tended to make profit-driven decisions to buy up familiar, established brands, Rosso has enjoyed the flexibility to venture into the unknown and develop new talent without worrying about the pleasing shareholders.

However, Rosso’s competition seems to be onto him. Recently, economic conditions have stagnated growth with bigger brands that Rosso’s competition was once more interested in. Suddenly, the moguls are racing to get their hands on the same type of up-and-coming talent Rosso has always focused on.

This year, Rosso admitted that LVMH beat him to the punch when they bought out new British labels J.W. Anderson and Nicholas Kirkwood, which he had been eyeing for quite some time: “We also considered investing in them but we never expected LVMH to move so quickly,” he explained to Reuters. As these giant holding companies, which undoubtedly have different priorities and visions for their brands, begin encroaching upon the same young talent Rosso seeks, things could get ugly—“What groups like LVMH are doing, is preventing designers like Anderson from working for somebody else,” he claims. Surely, he means somebody else who can perhaps offer more creative insight—somebody like himself.