Waiting for the DaTE: Frost.

DaTE, the international fair for avant-garde eyewear, will take place from Saturday 11th to Monday 13th September in Florence, at the Leopolda station. The event aims to be a strategic meeting opportunity, attracting companies which are known worldwide for their eyewear innovation and design, for their exclusive and selected products. As the ninth edition of DaTE approaches, we have interviewed some of the key players.

In this  interview we meet Marion Frost from Frost.

Giving shape to the the avant-garde is the essence of DaTE. What is the essence of your brand and how does it interpret the avant-garde?

Once in a life you will realize that everything in the world is repeating. For example history or fashion trends. But it's not in my interest wasting time with searching and waiting for the next “new” eyewear trend mostly based on an old one from former years. My impuls is developing new esthetic shapes, exploring new materials and finding helpful solutions for avant-garde eyewear innovations.

The materials are a key element of unique and original collections which do not neglect sustainability. Which ones have you chosen for the DaTE 2021 collections?

Re-launching new designs and eyeglasses isn’t an all-time branch contest. Reinventing the wheel or representing hybride superlatives isn’t the challenge. Being authentic and sophisticated in what you do and never loose sight what’s our main global homework now. Enviromental working with according materials to save valuable resources for the next generations. For example one idea behind our latest collection froSTYLE was CO2 compensation. Now we still proudly producing the whole metal frame with 100% green energy and a lot of love - here in Germany.

Exclusivity, transgression, design. These are all concepts that have distinguished DaTE since its founding. Which of these features does your brand most identify with, and why?

We always felt very comfortable from the first DaTE show on. In between all these exclusively selected eyeglass artists and high fashion passionates we savour this rarely moment every year. In this context we would like to point out that our design target isn't strictly forced to be strictly and totally different as the mass market. But from the first day on our unique hand crafted goods found it's place at the avant-garde niche eyewear market all over the world. That's our design comfort zone in which we having a feeling of home. We love to be surrounded with artificial creations and sometimes crazy state of the art design products all over there. Creating things it's more our passion than just a job. It's the homemade spirit of independent authenticity manufactured in Germanys Black Forest who makes the difference.

How does the Italian market perceive eyewear with high level of design, focused on craftsmanship and high-tech?