PORTRAIT ® Eyewear
Can fashion brands be sustainable? PORTRAIT says yes!

Currently, luxury brands are ubiquitous in all major cities worldwide, and they will continue to attract consumers’ attention as the highest status symbols of the “consumption-society”, which now dominates the world. But we need to be cautious, because the implicit association between famous brand names and high quality is not always accurate. Most of the time, “expensiveness” is just a synonym for “premium price”, which does not necessarily imply quality, craftsmanship or a sustainable business approach. Consumers should focus instead on the intrinsic worth of luxury products that truly embody a sustainable ethic.”Today we are setting the standards for sustainable luxury,” says Valentina Hernandez, CEO and co-founder of PORTRAIT, “where premium fashion can embrace a responsible business behaviour and pursue sustainable development. Every day at PORTRAIT, we strive to reinforce the blend between luxury and a series of sustainable targets, such as reducing our environmental impact, preserving raw materials, supporting our suppliers, encouraging luxury craftsmanship, and being sustainable right from the start. We are working to create a real Italian hub for fashion and handmade eyewear, defining tomorrow’s vision of luxury.”

At PORTRAIT, Sustainability also means philanthropy and the opportunity to support such organisations as the non-profit Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and many other local projects that strengthen mutual collaboration and team building. PORTRAIT further aims to preserve the traditional quality and ability of Italian craftsmanship through the careful search for contemporary design and adopts a fair-trade policy that supports small local companies, which represent a heritage of know-how handed down from generation to generation.

A GROWING GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS IN SEARCH OF REAL LUXURY

This is the real “Made in Italy“, known all over the world for excellence in creativity, premium quality and manual skills. Indeed, the eyewear is entirely hand built by local craftsmen and combined with high-tech production capacity, resulting in the highest quality standards. All PORTRAIT suppliers have embraced a philosophy of high energy efficiency and social responsibility policies, and the production process in every phase adheres to sustainable environmental practices. “We see our sunglasses like luxury art sculptures,” says Gabriel Hernandez, Art Creator and co-founder of PORTRAIT. “All the frames are original and unique, and the creation process, genuine – just like the audience we design for, a growing group of individuals in search for high quality items of real value and committed to supporting brands with an interest in improving the world we live in.”

PORTRAIT ® Eyewear has shown itself for years as the only brand in the eyewear arena that’s entirely related to art, from the inspiration that brings its models to life to the whole identity and narrative, with its product naming also art-related and the leverage of emerging art figures as an essential part of its communication strategy and marketing campaign. With a remarkable identity, PORTRAIT ® has introduced 5 different collections experimenting through the merging of an unprecedented identity with an intuitive trend that is, simultaneously, design and fashion-driven, but fundamentally art-inspired.

PORTRAIT Eyewear collaborates with Spanish artist Antonyo Marest who customises two models from the Glitch collection

Antonyo Marest is a Spanish street artist born in Alicante in 1987. With a strong artistic identity seeped in expertise, his work recalls elements of Art Deco being this movement, one of his biggest references. Marest work is also influenced by Kandinsky’s abstract art and Bofill’s postmodernism. With these art movements, the artist has been able to generate his own style based on texture, geometry and linear harmony. Other references to his work are Bolidismo, an architectural and industrial design movement of great influence in the 80s with a Mediterranean approach. PORTRAIT ® Eyewear and Antonyo Marest have given models Charlotte and Interface, both belonging to PORTRAIT’s Glitch series, a new different skin under the “Allegra” Limited Edition.

This special production features a joyful combination of colours, a skin that, applied to the Glitch-natural asymmetries, alludes to exotic styles, in other words, a recall to Marest’s Mediterranean Tropicalism. The Glitch collection takes inspiration from the Video Art movement while model Interface is dedicated to Peter Campus, an American pioneer video-artist of the 70’s who’s work experimented with the viewer identity, creating interaction through perception. The Glitch collection takes inspiration from the Video Art movement while model Charlotte is dedicated to Pipilotti Rist. These sunglasses express experimentation, courage and the break of conventional barriers.

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