© Maison Margiela / Photography: Jordan Hemingway

Maison Margiela and Gentle Monster have announced the newest edition in their ongoing eyewear collaboration, launching in stores on Thu – Mar 6. The release will be marked by a visual campaign as well as dedicated installations in several spaces across the planet. The third instalment in the ongoing creative dialogue, the collection examines the intersection between classicism and futurism. Drawing on the contemporary relationship between the artisanal and the digital – a continuous motif in the explorations of Maison Margiela and likewise echoed in the observations of Gentle Monster – the investigations are expressed in optical tensions juxtaposing the familiar and the uncharted. The study manifests in twenty eyewear designs – eight sunglasses and twelve spectacles – materialised in shapes that augment classic silhouettes with cyber-core aesthetics.

Photographed and directed by Jordan Hemingway, the campaign reflects on the alienation and attraction generated by the seductive mystique that exists between human and cyborg. Centred on the collection’s architectonic, metallic MM201 sunglasses, the still imagery features looks from the SS 2025 Avant-Premiere Collection. A futuristic notion of objects lasered from a single block of material takes form in the square, metallic MM201 sunglasses, which also pay homage to Maison Margiela’s emblematic L’Incognitos from 2008. The mask-like, frame-less architectonic silhouette is proposed in silver and green. The visual language echoes in the MM202, a narrow goggle-like structure crafted in black and silver acetate, and in the MM203, which imbues the same contour with a futuristic curve from lens across temple; in black, silver and red.

The MM204 and MM205 hack into traditional glamorous oval silhouettes with squared edges, creating robotic forms proposed in black, navy, red and grey. Intercepted with wide temples, three sunglasses augment classic expressions: the MM206 is an oval shape narrowed in form and rendered in all-black, black with brown lenses, and red leather; the MM207 amplifies the frames of archetypal rectangular sunglasses and features in black, navy and tortoise shell; and the MM208 is a sharpened take on the enduring cat-eye crafted in black, red and grey. Three silhouettes set on super-light structures are proposed as sunglasses with gold frames and as spectacles with silver frames: the almond-shaped MM216; the edged-oval MM218; and the super-narrowed oval MM220 with cable temple tips, which also features as gold-framed spectacles and as blue-lensed sunglasses. © superfuture

© Maison Margiela / Photography: Jordan Hemingway