So said Tim Rupp, design director of retail environments for Nike, during last year’s Frame Awards deliberations. They’ve created a buzz in a way that no other brand has done before – a reason for people to get off the couch and visit a sunglasses store. In a radical retail move, the in-house design team was called upon to deck out the interiors of SKP-S, the forward-facing offshoot of Beijing’s SKP luxury mall. These trompe-l’oeil pastries in the shape of candles, soaps or faces are sold exclusively at Mars Café in Beijing.Gentle Monster is an eyewear brand, right? Well, now the Seoul-based company can also add ‘set designers for an entire department store’ to its bag of tricks. The latest project from Gentle Monster? A wild attempt to create a brand of artistic desserts that look just as good as they taste. It presents the five new “Flatba” models in acetate – extremely oversized round sunglasses – and the “T-Optical” line of optical glasses in lightweight titanium. After a collaboration with Ambush, the brand revealed its 2020 campaign under the title of “Fearless: Facing the Unknown”, photographed by Hugo Comte. Just like in an art gallery, the installations and artworks on display change regularly to coincide with each new collection of sunglasses. In the age of online shopping, Gentle Monster demonstrates that a brand’s image is also determined by its outlets, which must be reworked to adapt to new modes of consumption and rising consumer expectations. Indeed, each shop features its own unique layout that always seeks to integrate contemporary art and design into the customer experience.

Strangeness and unconventional beauty form the core concerns of the house, which takes care to reflect this DNA throughout all of its storefronts. While in the Asian market, Gentle Monster prefers oversized models for a clientele eager to shape a smaller face, in Europe and the United States, the brand playfully experiments with more unusual forms. Deeply attuned to this trend, the Korean brand continuously pushes its creations to the next level as it produces models that approach the level of art.

No longer simply functional items, eyeglasses and sunglasses have now supplanted handbags and shoes as the pinnacle of luxury. Founded in 2011 in Seoul by Hankook Kim, Gentle Monster immediately seized on the potential of sunglasses as the ultimate fashion accessory for bold styles. In just nine years, Gentle Monster has morphed into a veritable giant of the global sunglasses market, worn by the biggest stars and applauded at the world’s fashion weeks.

Gentle monster