Akoni Eyeglasses & Frames

Japan has always been synonymous with high tech, high arts, and that amazing talent to instill philosophical senses and spiritual weight into the most ordinary things. You won't be mistaken to think of Akoni eyeglasses in exactly these terms. When Rosario Toscano and Salma Rachid came up with the idea of what was soon to grow into a trendsetting brand of modern luxury eyewear, they chose to nurture their brainchild in the gentle, wholesome, prolific lap of Japan. They favored the land of the rising sun for its access to supreme materials, focus on sustainable production, and outstanding craftsmanship of local artisans approaching each of their creations with the diligence and zest of a Shodo master carefully weighing every drop of ink on the tip of his brush before drawing a ten thousandth perfect curl.

Inspired by traditional Japanese art, with its razor-sharp laconism and softly unfolding metaphors, Akoni eyeglasses strive to fuse the poetic splendor of antiquity with the sleek, daring, parsec-wide pace of innovation - and successfully so. That said, the brand is convinced that "great design never needs to clamor for attention." It's not until you view a piece of their eyewear up close and personal that you're able to trace all the fine work and elaborate thought involved in it, so seamless, hypnotically polished, and honed to perfection it appears. But the longer you look the more your eye starts to take in. Each golden-tooled temple tip, each fine-threaded knurling piece, every inconspicuously graceful dual hinge has its own, subtle part in making Akoni eyeglasses what they are.

When asked to describe their products, Akoni's founders coined the phrase "intelligent luxury DNA." This mature, reserved, self-sufficient luxury is immediately evident in every line and curve of the brand's eyewear. Streamlining each model until there is nothing more left to add or take (cause saying less is the gateway to telling more), the company keeps seeking for the perfect technical means to capture fleeting bits of reality like a fly in a piece of amber. They keep fine-tuning their artistic gut to the echoing steps of the long-departed, letting them tread the world of the living one more time, titanium-clad and technicolor-blooded yet true to their ancient honor code.

Putting together the deftest hands and the brightest heads of the modern Japanese eyewear industry, Akoni gives new definitions to familiar forms and formulas, and each of them is more of a Haiku than a dictionary entry. The immaculate geometry of a samurai’s finishing stroke. Lines as clean and smooth as the surface of a zen pond at dawn. The flowing, whispery sheen of the finest silk dancing in the crisp ocean breeze. The ghostly sparkle of a super speedy subway train emerging from the murk of the glorious past and taking off right into a neon-lit, sky-scraping future… One can hardly run out of metaphors talking about Akoni - because metaphor is really the only valid way to talk about them. In fact, each pair of Akoni eyeglasses is pretty much a metaphor of its own. And, as any zen master will silently nod to, metaphors tend to stick.