Designer Spotlight: FAKOSHIMA

FAKOSHIMA is a nickname and artistic alter ego of the brand’s Creative Director Konstantin Shilyaev. Over a decade ago, he graduated as a graphic designer. Since then he has executed many projects, from textile design to window displays. In addition he has participated as a stylist in numerous product photography shoots. His taste and way of thinking was influenced by French graphic design, modern Japanese architecture and their visual culture, Belgian avant-garde fashion designers, vast variety of electronic music, Stanley Kubrick’s cinematography and fantastic cyberpunk literature creations by Jeff Nunn and William Gibson.

Yet it was the Japanese culture, that had the crucial influence on shaping his vision. Its features and style are manifested in the design of FAKOSHIMA eyewear brand. The brand’s aesthetic identity is mainly influenced by research and understanding of human beings in the future. The brand believe that humans will be androgenic with incorporated elements associated now with robots, androids and new technologies. It is important for the designer to create objects that excite imagination. Objects that naturally generate chains of associations or internal relations between person and the material world around.

Following the futurist designers, FAKOSHIMA continues to search for images and design elements of the future. Through combining new technologies and manual handling of materials, through the diversity of classical forms that establish links with the past, and paradoxical combinations that awaken imagination and conceive possible paths of what tomorrow’s mankind will be. At the same time, when speaking of classic it is worth noting that FAKOSHIMA’s ideas carry no time reference, he grabs visual ideas from different eras and creates images that did not exist before.

FAKOSHIMA’s design interplays with the classics, yet it sets a new direction. Based on traditional forms, it allows them to shapeshift influenced by the forthcoming imagery, and live their own, new life. For their owners, FAKOSHIMA sunglasses became an insignia, an identification code by which it’s easy to spot. Wherever you are and whatever you wear. It is a kind of  mask that hides. It attracts attention, intrigues and establishes new ties between their owner and their surroundings.

Melanie Stockman

Click here to see other collections from FAKOSHIMA.