Designer Stefan Sagmeister spent part of his last sabbatical in Mexico City, where he repeatedly came across Frida Kahlo's influences. Her creative nature and legendary facial features ultimately inspired him to collaborate with Swiss eyewear manufacturerGötti - the fascinating result is only available for a limited time.
Stefan Sagmeister describes Mexico City as one of the liveliest places in the world, and he spent part of his last sabbatical there. And he mainly spent it admiring films, architecture and design. Almost everything he liked was from the last five to ten years, so he was able to meet the respective designers for dinner and talk about their work. "Frida Kahlo hovered over all of this," he describes. Not necessarily as part of the conversations, but rather as a powerful presence that also explains the relentless stream of tourists.
Sagmeister is known for his regular sabbaticals, he holds TED Talks on his time out and sees them as a powerful tool for new impulses. It is hardly surprising that he felt the same way in a vibrant, glamorous city like Mexico City, where he repeatedly encounters Frida Kahlo: "Her omnipresence outshines her husband Diego Rivera," he says. She is to Mexico City what Klimt is to Vienna and Mozart is to Salzburg: a fantastic artist who is mercilessly and inflationarily overexposed. Nevertheless, he decided to use her as a source of inspiration for the eyewear collaboration withGötti. "She is one of the few artists whose fame reached such a high point that her facial features - like Salvador Dalí's moustache or Andy Warhol's wig - were transformed into a visual signifier, a logo."
The conclusion seemed logical for the busy graphic designer and typographer, whose fascination with logo development is manifold. With the Swiss eyewear brand, he found a team that - like him - attaches great importance to traditional, high-quality craftsmanship and innovative technologies. "Swissness", as the eyewear manufacturer calls it; since its foundation in 1993, the focus has been on quality consistency. Over the past 25 years, Sven Götti has been responsible for the design of all models. Götti Switzerland now supplies selected specialist stores in over 40 countries.
This is where details come into their own: the lenses, temples and hinge mechanisms are additively manufactured and each designed so unobtrusively that only a single iconic brushstroke remains visually. The photochromatic lenses change the light absorption from 12% indoors to 85% in the sun. And speaking of the sun, the lenses provide 100% protection against UVA/UVB rays and have an anti-reflective inner coating.
Sunglasses GöttiDimension
Temples: additively manufactured polyamide stainless steel Lite
Color: Ash / Silver
Lenses: Photochromatic grey
Limited Edition: 300 pieces, retail price €515
Sales start: 10 June 2021, 5:00 p.m. until 17 June 2021 exclusively via gotti.ch/sagmeister
