Photos by Andrew Boyle, courtesy of Gentle Monster.
At New York Fashion Week’s Spring/Summer 2016 events, Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster presented a Las Vegas-worthy assembly of Olympic class fencers supported by fashion runway models wearing their always unique high-fashion glasses. With staging, lighting and choreography worthy of a Hollywood production, and accompanied by electronic duo Gatekeeper, the crowd was mesmerized by the combo of stylish eyewear and dueling fencers.
Gentle Monster’s artistic approach to retail has earned plenty of write-ups, but it was its celebrity placements that gave the brand its mass credentials and has catapulted them in ten U.S. stores, including Harvey Nichols and Nordstrom. The 2017 collection consists of over 24 newly developed designs along with reiterations and variations on the popular styles Absente, Lovesome, Cuba, and Vanilla Road, which have been fan favorites of both men and women. The unisex eyewear plays a key role in many of the most popular styles loved by noted celebrities Ashley Benson, Emmy Rossum, Hilary Duff, Jessica Alba and Kourtney Kardashian.
Gentle Monsters hopes to enter the market with less emphasis on celebrity, but more on the everyday consumer of classy affordable eyewear. Won Lee, brand consultant in NY has said, “Asian people are still influenced by celebrity, but in the US, I’m not so sure.” We don’t think he has absorbed the Kardashian phenomenon yet!
