Meet The Designers - KOMONO
Freshmen Media have beautifully showcased Anton Janssens, the Co-Founder of KOMONO talking the viewer through his inspirations, what was his reason to fall in the industry, and what he loves about the direction and production of his World class products and the impact they have on their audience.
Meet The Designers - KOMONO
Anton Janssens:
Hi there, I'm Anton, co-founder of Komono. I have a background in snowboarding. My co-founding partner was one of my snowboarding buddies. When we looked around we felt like the watches and sunglasses business was pretty conservative, almost standing still. That really triggered us. We're like, "Okay, we can really change this, bring some new ideas," which we got from fashion, from our travels, from all sorts of things that inspired us. We could use all of that energy and ideas and put them into these categories and create something that's more contemporary using ideas from the past but translating them into what the future could look like. We wanted to make something more approachable but at the same time, keep the standards that the luxury market uses as far as quality, design, and image go. Those three elements really are the core of what defines Komono today.
Two of the more recent curated projects that we've done and what we're very proud of is the collaboration in the watches with Andy Rementer, a graphic artist cartoonist from Philadelphia. He created three specific pieces of art, which we printed on the wristbands of the watches.
We get asked a lot where the name and the logo come from. Actually, it's pretty simple. Komono is originally a Japanese word, which means small things, accessories. We found it really looked good, it sounded good. We used the word, also, for our icon logo. With the three dots coming from the three O's in the wordmark and top, the two on the left with the horizontal line represent our sunglasses, and the third one with the vertical line which represents the watches.
The partnership between Komono and Fresh Cotton is a very natural one. It makes total sense, actually, since me and Jesser, one of the owners of Fresh Cotton, go way back. We met in the mountains on a snowboard on a snowboarding trip, probably 15 20 years ago. It made total sense to keep the partnership going and then to embark on this new venture, first on our own brands that we distributed. Then, of course, a couple years later when we started Komono, they were really key in the development of the brand. It's a partnership we value a lot.
Here we have the stainless steel sunglasses line. There's three styles there. There's the Monroe, with more of an octagon shape, perfect circles for the lens, and then a bit more classic with the tailor, of course.
A line that really works well for us is the metal series where we combine metal temples with acetate and injected frames. One of the key colour wise, in this series, of course, is the bright red one. The material itself is rubberised which gives a really soft touch to it. The red that we selected is also just a little bit brilliant. I think when you bring all of these elements together, I think it's one of the key products for me and something I'm pretty proud of as well.
In our watches program, one of our key styles is the Winston Regal. From a material point of view, we use Italian leathers, a lot of detail. A great example of how we work is translating a classic idea and making it contemporary.
I really love what I do, so for the future I wouldn't change too much, maybe just do more of the same thing. Essentially, we are a design driven company and it's these designs that drive us into the future. We want to explore so many more things and keep being inspired by the architects, the artists, the graphic designers, and everybody surrounding us. Keep your eyes open for whatever the future will bring.
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Original article was posted by Freshmen Media for Freshcotton.