Oh My Eyes, a New Luxury Eyewear Brand From Sweden, Is Built on the Concept of Collaboration

“Round shapes, warm colors, and interesting technical details” characterize the debut line of this Swedish eyewear company.

If two eyes are better than one, imagine what eight—or 10—eyes can do. Demonstrating the power of plenty are the two couples behind Oh My Eyes, a luxury eyewear brand from Sweden, launching today. Each member of the team brings a unique skill set to the endeavor: Creative director Christopher Hunt is a photographer; Jonna Dagliden Hunt is a journalist; the CEO, David Lauwiner, also heads a global accessories brand; and Anna-Karin Wikstrand, employed full-time at L’Oreal, is the PR and communications manager. What of the designer? Oh My Eyes will work with a new talent each season.

The foursome, all of whom were itching to build a brand, embarked on this project about three years ago. Its narrative was driven by a quotidian accident that turned into an adventure: While sailing, Hunt dropped his custom-made sunglasses in the sea; his sister-in-law hired a diver who tried to retrieve this sunken treasure. This episode, explains Dagliden Hunt, “made us think about sunglasses and why they sometimes mean so much. They can have this kind of story behind them and that makes them unique and special and original.” Having found their narrative and niche, the team then set about defining their aesthetic and system of working.

Oh My Eyes’s debut collection

Photo: Christopher Hunt / Courtesy of Oh My Eyes

The Oh My Eyes founders are hoping to challenge the idea of Scandi Minimalism by introducing the “round shapes, warm colors, and interesting technical details” that excited them while researching the region’s Modernism as it has been expressed through architecture, furniture, and product design. Having settled on a look, they then challenged Marco Galleani, a veteran eyewear designer based in Padua, Italy, to offer his take on these codes. The results are six unisex “graphic statement pieces with a classic finish,” in Dagliden Hunt’s words, that were inspired by “the chunky and luxurious frames” of icons like Halston and Andy Warhol. Fans of Françoise Hardy will be delighted with the squarish OH12 model, familiar from an iconic photo of the songstress holding a point-and-shoot camera. (The brand’s already in-the-works second collection is being created by Milan Sheen, a South Korean shoe designer working in Milan.)

Cost-efficiency doesn’t drive Oh My Eyes; quality, craftsmanship, and attention to detail do. Made using Japanese titanium and Italian cellulose acetate, the company’s products are hand-produced by Sabae in Japan and feature an innovative construction technique invented by Galleani, who anchored the frames with a special clip. Sustainability is part of the team’s vision, too. Its cases are crafted from vegetable-tanned leather by a family-run business in Småland, Sweden; cleaning cloths are made from locally sourced biodegradable material. In the future, Oh My Eyes hopes to create a proprietary acetate sourced from Swedish forests. To create a 360-degree experience, the unboxing experience for this debut collection will be enhanced via a partnership with a Danish beauty company: Each purchase comes with protective Nuori Vital eye cream. The level of detail is just out of sight.