LONDON — Linda Farrow has always loved a collaboration, and in the past years has worked with everyone from Dries Van Noten to young labels-of-the-moment including The Attico, Magda Butrym, Area and Alessandra Rich. Those projects have helped the eyewear brand stay current, and involved in the fashion conversation.
Now the brand is changing things by tapping a digital artist for the first time. Farrow’s creative director Simon Jablon has chosen Sara Shakeel, a Pakistani artist known for using glitter or crystals, to create both digital and physical collages, for the latest collaboration.
It wasn’t a strategic move, according to Jablon, who found himself adding a lot of Shakeel’s imagery on his moodboard and then just calling her to propose a partnership.
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“The essence of her imagery was so inspiring, and fit in with the collection we were designing,” said Jablon, adding that their mutual love of all things shine and glamour made the process easy. “What you need is an essence of an idea and then the details work themselves out. What we were doing was already in Sara’s world, we were already in her mind, so the design process was smooth.”
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The result is a capsule of three sunglass styles, featuring Shakeel’s crystal embellishment across the handles of the glasses or around the lenses to create high-drama, high-glamour pieces. Prices range from 405 pounds to 735 pounds.
“There’s Christmas and the back of COVID-19, so people are ready for some sparkle in their life. Sara’s twist adds so much more fun to the collection, and this is the best time to celebrate,” said Jablon, adding that the company plans to go big in its communication efforts with digital campaigns, a festive party in London, and specially designed store windows.
Puyi in China will feature the collaboration across the windows of more than 30 locations — as well as launches on key online partners like Matchesfashion and Net-a-porter.
“We’re going through all the different marketing touch points to make sure that everyone hears it in different ways. We’re very proud of this, so we want to scream about it as loud as we can,” said Jablon, who was an early pioneer of collaborations.
“We brought Jeremy Scott back before he brought his brand back — it’s something we enjoy. It’s never been about doing a collaboration for the sake of it; it’s all about working with someone we like and enjoy their brand, vision or lifestyle. If it’s going to resonate, your team needs to get joy from it. You can’t just tick boxes and stick someone’s name on the product. It’s always about delivering a real fashion product, which deserves to be aligned with the brand, not just a license.”
Shakeel, who describes herself as a “mad scientist” who’s always playing with crystal and broken glass, said that working with a new medium gave her a huge boost of confidence. She is mostly used to seeing her collages saved as people’s iPhone wallpapers.
“I was pregnant at that time, I was confused and thinking of stepping back from work, but the [Linda Farrow] team made me feel so comfortable and trusted my vision and process. For an artist, it’s huge when you’re acknowledged and respected for what you do, or given the chance to reflect your art by an established company. We are the new generation of artists coming on Instagram blowing up the space, so partnerships like this one give us hope that we can keep going and achieve more,” she said.