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Face à Face


The shape of light and color

Words
Alessandra Albarello

02/11/2021

A brand founded over 25 years ago which has always captured the spirit of the times, drawing inspiration from art, architecture and design. Without ever looking back...

A surrealist vision: the first pair of Bocca glasses inspired by Salvador Dali?'s Mae West Lips sofa designed in the 1930s, and which the brilliant Catalan artist dedicated to the sensual American actress. The exemplary story of Face à Face can begin right here, with this iconic model, emblematic of creativity and imagination without cultural or geographical boundaries. An aesthetic gamble which, given its success, was then continued in a line of glasses with leg-shaped temples and shoe-shaped temple tips. 

Face à Face has its origins in a particularly fertile and creative terrain, which, especially in the 1990s, saw various independent French companies coming to the fore, succeeding in counteracting the standardisation of large groups and famous brands with an avant- garde, powerful and unique style. After gaining important experience in leading companies in the sector, Pascal Jaulent and Nadine Roth founded Face à Face in 1995, transferring their know-how into a new brand to indulge their passions, freely mixing them with the influences of a fluid and cosmopolitan city like Paris.

Architecture, art, design and the magic of a globally unique atmosphere are thereby transformed into a new way of looking, of living, of experimenting, with sought-after collections attracting the attention of a demanding public with strong personalities. Light and shadow, sensuality and boldness, reality and dream are transferred into wearable sculptures thanks to a mix of technology and artisan savoir-faire.

Exactly twenty years later, the company took a quantum leap, choosing to grow and also to strengthen its international expansion, thanks to a more complex and capillary organisation including other brands, all consistent with a design-oriented vision. And so in 2015, Face à Face became part of Design Eyewear Group.

The first Bocca eyewear inspired by Salvador Dali's Mae West Lips sofa

The first Bocca eyewear inspired by Salvador Dali's Mae West Lips sofa

In order to never lose sight of its identity, the Face à Face creative team has always remained in Paris, whereas production currently takes place in France, Italy and Japan, in search of the best materials and the most suitable production techniques for each model, and the ongoing and transversal comparison with the various other companies in the group constantly enriches the brand's genetic heritage.

Throughout all these years, the company's DNA has remained true to itself, never abandoning the need to explore or delve into other worlds and languages in order to develop new aesthetic concepts: such as colour, which in the new Face à Face collection becomes a magical exercise in light that suddenly appears, creeping into the material like a ray of sunlight through the sky and creating extraordinary, unexpected prismatic effects.

Chromatisms that sometimes become almost elusive, a sort of alchemy which, in some models, translates into subtle flights defined by glowing neon to emphasise geometric shapes: didactic statements that light up with electric tones, with clear references to pop art. So, art again, because choosing a pair of glasses is a cultural choice, not just an aesthetic or functional one. Who do I want to be? How do I want to look? Or, why not, even disappear? But art also involves knowing how to construct new emotions and poetry each time, using a limited surface area, deconstructing and recomposing the same elements; boldly applying unusual solutions and calibrating the volumes to find the right balance.

Face à Face tackles this challenge by focusing on details and quality, which is why it only offers capsule collections: Face à Face, a
line for both men and women, Bocca, which is exclusively for women and inspired by art, and Alium, which caters to a male audience only, with models in aluminium and acetate featuring an innovative hinge. And so the story continues, because Face à Face does not like looking back. And it won't be stopping here, by any means. 

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