Congratulations on your new collaboration with Oliver Peoples.
Thank you so much. It's my first time designing eyewear, so it was really fun to take on the challenge and try to create something that felt unique to me. I also wanted to push the boundaries of what Oliver Peoples is able to do and what they stand for as well. It was interesting to get that conversation started. This has been almost eight months in the works and it has been a very detail-oriented experience. A lot of different journeys encapsulated in it all.
Having gone to school for architecture, where do you see the most distinct parallels between fashion and architecture when it comes to designing?
I was just actually with a friend of mine who also went to architecture school, and we were saying how, if you want to do anything in design, we really think the best education you could get is going to architecture school. Even when presenting drawings or projects or even creating a layout, picking the fonts, and you know, choosing how to present these images: it’s all graphic design and questioning whether it fulfills the purpose it was designed for. You have to switch between thinking of things aesthetically, and also thinking of things functionally. And so I think I've kind of approached this collaboration with a similar mindset.
Given that mindset, what was starting the process of this collaboration like?
I've never designed eyewear and my entry point into this collaboration wasn't necessarily how the glasses were going to look, but more of what feeling or story or aesthetic is being conveyed. You can see a lot of references to artists I love, whether it be Robert Longo or Richard Avedon. I was also really thinking about this kind of rock and roll, LA in the 90s, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee aesthetic. Something kind of reckless.
Something I find really fascinating about the designs is the corewire in the frame emulating the look of barbed wire. Where did the idea for that come from?
You know the kind of classic barbed wire tattoo that many people had in the 90s? It’s that kind of aesthetic and then relating it back to what Oliver Peoples does, which is just really, really beautiful, handcrafted glasses. It was also really fun learning all the technical terms of all these different aspects of the sunglasses, you know. Like the line that’s in the temples is called the corewire and they can do so many interesting things with them technologically and visually. We were able to three-dimensionally create that corewire into looking like barbed wire based on that inspiration.