Wherever you look, you’ll find this spring belongs to Sci-Fi. Whether it’s on the silver screen with the highly-awaited release of Dune: Part Two or on the runway with high-shine surfaces and hooded ensembles serving post-apocalyptic burner girl (here’s looking at you, Rick), Sci-Fi and all its futuristic frisson is back—and perhaps, more fervent than ever. Blame it on the advent of AI; blame it on the global warming crisis and its impending dystopian sunshine; blame it on whomever or whatever you like. The point is the space age is back in orbit; thus, the mantra remains: the weirder, the better.
Gentle Monster, the Korean pioneer of space-ready specs, has made its name wowing with lofty doses of weird. Either on the sales floor of its boutiques where giant robotic heads nod yes and shake no or in the frames of its sunglasses so jagged they evoke chills, everything in the realm of Gentle Monster emerges from the left field.
As they say, great minds think alike. Maison Margiela, the très bizarre, très chic Parisian fashion house, rides on that very same wavelength, pulsing with avant-garde audaciousness. So, when the two houses joined forces for a sequel to their initial collaboration, it was expected they’d release a collection lightyears ahead of the pack. However, it was unexpected, that they’d reframe the very structure of the sunglass with a silhouette daring enough to send your freak flag soaring so high that you might as well enter another planet. With 17 seriously sick designs, including ten sunglasses and seven spectacles, that much was delivered, and then some. Consider yourself teleported.
Incoming: Unidentifiable fly object. Among the attention-demanding frames dipped in lustrous leather and acetate oddities that beguile the eye in tortoiseshell, transparent, and neutral hues, most charming is its wrap-around sunglasses—sans temples. That’s right. No temples. Ditching their legs, these bad boys bring the focus back to the eyes. With a wrap-around structure, whose shape is so evocative of Venetian masquerade masks you’d think you were at a masquerade ball were it not for their reflective surfaces, Gentle Monster, and Maison Margiela’s follow-up signals their dial of outré will only be cranked up from here henceforth. Leave the safe sunnies at the nearest exit of the spacecraft.
