Sunglasses Are an Intrinsic Part of the Look

High-end sunglasses used to be about the logo, but now designers, like New Zealander Karen Walker, are making them an integral part of their seasons’ collections, the Independent reports.

Walker has shown her eyewear as part of her New York Fashion Week show since it launched in 2006: “Eyewear is an intrinsic part of our look and also of our business – everything we do is linked together through our innate brand values: fun, optimism, strength, sense of humour.”

Rather than linking indelibly to a specific collection, Walker instead creates designs that are based on classic shapes with a cool, contemporary twist. “I think people like that our eyewear designs are subverted classics; we don’t try to do edgy for the sake of edgy,” she says.

In the eyewear market for nearly a decade, Walker has noticed a change in the eyewear market over the decade that she has been in the industry that time: “A lot of big brands are now putting more energy into designing eyewear rather than just licensing their names out for generic eyewear looks, and there are also a lot more independent brands now.”

Walker has garnered a fan base of stylish women including Charlize Theron, Anne Hathaway, Alexa Chung, Florence Welch and Rihanna.

Original article by Rebecca Gonsalves, The Independent, May 5, 2014.