Workwear for your eyes: Gentle Monster unveils its collection with Heron Preston

You might not have heard of Heron Preston, but the American multi-hyphenate — he’s a designer, artist, content creator and DJ — is well-known in streetwear circles.

Aside from having worked with Kanye West and Virgil Abloh, as well as brands such as Nike, Preston has an eponymous fashion label that is known for subverting uniform codes as well as its focus on sustainability: In 2016, he worked with New York’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY), using donated DSNY and other upcycled clothing to create a workwear-meets-streetwear collection.

Now, he joins a roster of other edgy designers and personalities (including Henrik Vibskov and Ambush) who have lent their creative chops and inimitable cool to South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster.

Comprising three styles with rectangular acetate frames, the Heron Preston x Gentle Monster collection makes clever use of a Heron Preston motif — the spirit level. For those who aren’t particularly into DIY projects and the like, a spirit level is commonly used in construction to ensure that a surface is horizontal or vertical.

The brand first used the element as a design accent in the heel of a women’s boot. Here, the spirit level, filled with liquid in green or blue, is embedded into the left temple of each pair of eyewear.

On the right temple is the designer’s logo in a bold, workwear-signifying dark orange. The only potential downside of these glasses is that you might have to listen to endless jokes about how level your ears are in relation to your eyes. Still, worth it.

Each model from the Heron Preston x Gentle Monster eyewear collection retails for $495.

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This article was first published in The Peak.