AKONI

AKONI was founded in 2017 in Paris by French luxury-eyewear executive Henry Akoni Eghani as a contemporary luxury eyewear brand specifically focused on what Eghani described as 'a deliberately-architectural-and-handcrafted contemporary-luxury eyewear vocabulary anchored to Japanese-acetate and Italian-titanium construction.' The brand has been one of the defining post-2017 European-anchored 'architectural-luxury-eyewear' brands. The AKONI vocabulary settled around several specific products: hand-finished Japanese-acetate-and-Italian-titanium luxury frames with deliberately-architectural proportional play, the brand's iconic Stellar aviator programme, the iconic Apollo geometric-frame programme, deliberately-experimental fashion-week-aesthetic eyewear collaborations, and a colour palette anchored to washed-black acetate, washed-charcoal titanium, oxblood-acetate, ecru, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated transparent-acetate colours including electric-blue, marigold-yellow, and washed-rose. Production is split between Japanese Sabae-region acetate-eyewear workshops and Italian titanium-eyewear workshops. The brand is independent and held by Eghani. AKONI operates with no permanent retail of its own, distributing through SSENSE, MR PORTER, MATCHES, Net-a-Porter, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, the major US-and-European luxury eyewear specialty retailers, and a curated set of contemporary-luxury-eyewear specialty retailers globally. The brand has been one of the more quietly disciplined post-2017 European-anchored 'architectural-luxury-eyewear' brands.