How Akoni’s 21st-Century Eyewear Blends Metallurgy with Craft
It’s traditional for luxury brands to come with a clear sense of provenance, a single point of origin. Premium eyewear brand Akoni, on the other hand, likes to do things differently. It’s from everywhere—kinda. It was founded by Italian Rosario Toscano in 2020 to merge Italian design sensibilities, Swiss engineering, and Japanese artisanship. Four years on and based in Lugano, Switzerland, the collections are designed partly in Los Angeles but manufactured entirely in Fukui, the epicenter of Japanese eyewear manufacturing, where Akoni went all out to use elevated materials and artisanal techniques to refine and elevate its frames. There, craftsmen are schooled in multiple ancient disciplines including joinery, blade-making, and kiriko (or cut glass). The results are bold, sleek, and unmistakable.
But this is not so much about the ancient aesthetics as it is about new-age science. It was Japan that first developed titanium as a viable material for eyewear in the 1980s, offering a superior strength and lightness that is unmatched in other metals. Materials featured for the hardware include titanium as well as aluminum. Both add functional strength and a premium, engineered look. Where acetate is used for frames, it is hand-carved from blocks of solid “Zyl” acetate, produced from renewable wood in a painstaking six-month process.
All of which means that Akoni eyewear comes at a rather premium price. Even the name, which sounds conveniently Japanese (but isn’t) plays into that expensive vibe. Akoni, in fact, is derived in a roundabout way via Greek from the Latin word Antonius, meaning priceless. In an industry where pretty much every designer label treats eyewear as its no-brainer, high-profit entry point, you might ask, “Why bother?” For Akoni, that’s precisely the point: Nobody else does.
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