Silhouette brings a taste of the Sunshine City to London

Silhouette Eyewear highlighted its latest sunglasses collections at a recent press event, bringing contemporary updates to iconic styles with a Miami-inspired campaign.

On the terrace of the Violin Factory in London, Silhouette featured several of its recent collections with a display designed to invoke the vibe of the Sunshine City, Miami.

Karen Parsons, head of marketing for Silhouette UK, explained that each frame in the 2022 sunglasses collection is named after a different area of the city. She said: “What we wanted to do was to bring that Miami summer vibe to the collection and give each style its own personality and unique identity.”

Timeless tint

New for August, Silhouette has injected a fresh take to its TMA Collection. The frames are designed without hinges or screws, and for this reason, the frames took off as a standard eyewear for NASA astronauts in 2000.

“TMA Icon has been around since 1999 and it’s still the lightest rimless design on the market and hugely popular,” Parsons told OT. “We’ve added a bit of a fashion twist to the collection this year with a tinted concept.”

The styles are each fully customisable, with wearers able to select the lens shape, the sides, and the colour tint.

“This year we’re seeing a lot of tints on the runway in fashion weeks so it seems to be right on the money in terms of trends,” Parsons added.

The resurgence of 1990 and 2000s styles amongst younger demographics has perhaps played a role in an increased interest in rimless styles, and Silhouette suggested the new tints extend this appeal further.

“I think it’s going to be really popular,” Parsons said. “People have the icon already, this is a nice twist and reinvention.”

2022 highlights

A highlight of the summer 2022 collection is the oversized ‘Fisher Island’ frame, part of the Rimless Shades collection. The high-tech titanium material is lightweight, bringing the frames in at 16.5 grams.

The style was featured in a social media collaboration with the musician, Rita Ora, who wore the frames and tinted lens concept in a series of Instagram posts.

The ‘Biscayne Bay’ frame, part of the ‘Streamline Collection,’ invokes the sailing aesthetic with a sporty, dynamic shape. The lenses feature Silhouette’s Light Q Grey technology as a photochromic option, while the rimless shades are made from a combination of high-tech titanium and SPX temper lenses for a lightweight and durable model.

Part of the EOS Collection, the ‘Aventura’ frame brings a youthful look to the collection. Made from a high-tech SPX+ material developed by Silhouette, the frames weigh less than 20 grams.

Parsons shared: “People pick them up and are surprised by how light they are. For us, that is still the critical element – the lightweight comfort that we can achieve in our designs from the combination of frame and lens materials.”

Finally, Silhouette displayed its show-stopping limited edition collection for summer 2022, the Futura Dot. Only 1964 pieces have been released within the collection, the figure chosen to reflect the year of the brand’s founding.

“When we released Futura back in the 70s it became a bit of a collectible. We’ve brought it bang up to date and given it a few embellishments. It’s still really iconic and hugely popular,” Parsons said.

Award winners

Over the past year Silhouette has scooped a number of design awards including the Red Dot Best of the Best for pioneering design, with its ‘Fisher Island’ frame, and two Red Dot awards for Outstanding Design for both the ‘Futura Dot’ and ‘New York Sky’.

The brand also recently received an iF Design Award for its Purist Collection and the Silhouette Vision Sensation app.

Commenting on this recognition, Parsons noted that the awards mean a lot to the designers at Silhouette, as well as to the brand: “It demonstrates that we never sit still. We’re always trying to push ourselves in terms of design and doing something a little bit different.”

“I think that, when you get those kinds of awards, it shows that we still push ourselves in terms of design excellence,” she added.

The TMA Tint collection is set to be a key focus for late summer and autumn, before an injection of elegance around the festive season.

“Then from October to January, we’re back into Sun 2023,” Parsons said. “We have some gorgeous designs coming for the next season.”