As if crushed: Maison Margiela and Gentle Monster unveil 68 “broken” frames
The fourth eyewear collection by Maison Margiela and Gentle Monster arrives on 29 October. Many frames look dented or half-dismantled, and Alex Prager directed the film.
Photo: Tomás Del Coro from Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, USA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · Maison Margiela · youtube.com
Paris fashion house Maison Margiela and South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster are presenting their fourth joint collection. It comprises 68 styles – 43 sunglasses and 25 optical frames – and goes on sale on 29 October through both brands' channels. The guiding theme is deconstruction, a core Margiela principle: familiar eyewear shapes are distorted and partly reassembled.
According to DSCENE, some frames look crushed or partially dismantled – like objects at an intermediate stage of production. Complex writes that the glasses look “intentionally broken”. There are also oversized styles that cover much of the face like a mask, and slim, upswept shapes. Some frames are wrapped in leather. The temples carry Margiela's signature four white stitches; on slim models they partly run freely along the edge.
The campaign is a short film by US artist Alex Prager: a woman has ten minutes to meet someone and rushes through a changing city, encountering characters wearing pieces from the collection. Both brands posted the film on their YouTube channels on 26 October. Pop-up spaces open in eight cities: Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne and Paris. In Seoul, Gentle Monster's home city, a performance by choreographer Damien Jalet and artist Ian McMahon is also planned.