NYC Eyewear Watch: Maison Margiela x Gentle Monster Fourth Collection Lands, Tokyo Aoyama Among Pop-Ups

Maison Margiela and Gentle Monster have unveiled their fourth collaborative eyewear collection, built around the idea of "Deconstruction." Familiar frame shapes and structures are taken apart and distorted to propose a different look for glasses.

The aesthetic is deliberately unfinished. Styles appear crushed and modified, as if frozen midway through fabrication or disassembly, while oversized frames wrap the face and turn eyewear into a kind of mask. The line spans both sunglasses and optical frames, with models numbered from MM301 to MM325 on the brand's U.S. site.

The campaign centers on a short film directed by artist Alex Prager. It follows a protagonist through an ever-shifting world and introduces the silhouettes through a crowd of distinct personas. Capturing the mystery and tension beneath the ordinary, the film treats deconstruction as the beginning of new possibilities rather than an end.

To mark the release, special pop-up spaces are opening in eight cities: Seoul (Haus Nowhere Seoul), Tokyo (Gentle Monster Aoyama, in Minami-Aoyama), Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne and Paris (Marais). The spaces are designed around imperfect, irregular forms and contrasting materials.

For Japanese readers, Aoyama's place on the list is the notable detail. Individual styles can also be browsed on Gentle Monster's U.S. site under the sunglasses and glasses categories.