For two brands known for their exciting collaborations, it was perhaps only a matter of time before British fashion label Ahluwalia and Amsterdam-based glasses brand Ace & Tate joined forces themselves. And, with shared sustainability goals and a similar emphasis on beautiful, quality products, it makes sense that such a partnership should take form rather organically. “I don’t always have conversations that land in a partnership,” founder and creative director Priya Ahluwalia tells me over Zoom as we discuss the seemingly written-in-the-stars collaboration. “But this one I did.”

Their new line of glasses bridge Ace & Tate’s forward-thinking materials and functionality with Ahluwalia’s signature bold prints. Building off of the label’s SS24 collection, Acknowledgements, which sought to give overlooked artists their “flowers”, the collaboration features floral motifs on the new Niku and Mirko styles, experimenting with negative space, textured acetate, and layered prints. We spoke with Priya Ahluwalia all about it.

Read the interview…

How did you first get connected with Ace and Tate?
That’s a really good question. How did it come about? You know what, I actually think it was through a friend called Dio Kurazawa. He does the Bear Scouts. I’ve known him for a long time, he does a lot of work with sustainable brands, and he was talking to Ace & Tate and said, “you guys should connect, because you would you get on, you do similar things in different spaces.” And then from there, it was quite a nice organic thing. I happened to be in Amsterdam around that time for something to do with my film, so I was like, “oh, I’m in Amsterdam. I’d love to come and see you guys.” And then I went, and it was just really nice. Everyone was so lovely. Everyone’s so nice there. And they showed me around, showed me all the different types of samples. And I was really excited by it. And I think in that conversation, we decided, “let’s do something.”

How did the design process differ, working in a new material?
I think for us, the main difference was that we were learning about the new material, what the possibilities were with acetate, like what we could change, what we couldn’t.

And so it was a materials learning sort of opportunity. And I found it really fun. The team at Ace & Tate made it a really streamlined process and answered all our questions. I learned about hinge design in a way that I’ve not thought about before. Some of our glasses, there’s an Ahluwalia “A” on the hinge, which I love. It’s a really nice detail. So learning about how that could work functionally.

Designing for glasses has an extra level of like functionality to it than, say, doing ready-to-wear clothes. Because with clothes, as long as someone can put their head through it and their arms through it, there’s the scope to make something like a lot more experimental with less of a thought about functionality. I mean, I always like my clothes to be functional and I like people to be able to wear them and live their everyday life in it.

What was it like to build off of your SS24 collection and translate those ideas into a fresh collection?
We developed these different prints inspired by the idea of “giving someone their flowers,” because the SS24 collection is called Acknowledgements and it was all about my research into people that have been overlooked in history and people that deserve to be given their flowers. So there was definitely those floral motifs, I thought about the colour palette in the collection, we used our “joy print” which is kind of a more evergreen Ahluwalia print, we’ve used it in different iterations since the start… so it was just about thinking about the mainline collection and what would complement it, what would enhance it, and then thinking about how those elements could work with the techniques.

Can you speak about some of the people you researched?
There’s people like Baya Mahieddine who was an Algerian artist and was Picasso’s assistant for years and his work was like profoundly changed after her involvement — you can really see the difference in aesthetic— but she’s someone that’s never spoken about. She’s female and she’s North African. There’s people like Valaida Snow who was a black female trumpeter who was overlooked in her lifetime and I guess appreciated a bit more now. And then from that research, I was thinking about looking at the different motifs within things to do with their work — so it might be like I’m looking at a photograph of that person or, for example, Marsha P. Johnson who I think in recent years has had a lot more celebration, but she was really a pioneer in Stonewall and she was black trans woman. She has this beautiful photo of her in flower crowns and that’s kind of the thing that made me start thinking about how all these people deserve to have their flowers — and then that’s when I started to think about the floral motifs.

Titus Kaphar used negative space to really make you look at things. He is a black painter from America and he paints black people into Renaissance style paintings and then he uses negative space to make you refocus on the main subject and he’s one of the most amazing artists and to be honest with you, in different ways, I love his work continuously and he inspires me continuously, but that was sort of how I ended up thinking about the negative space of flowers. And then we started to think about how they could be used on acetate for the glasses.

Everything that I do or design or decide to do is really intentional and although someone that’s not behind the scenes doesn’t know that — because at the end of the day, I’m creating products, I want it to just look beautiful and for people to enjoy wearing it — in order for me to make those decisions, I really do a lot of deep research and there’s a lot of research and analysis that goes into my decisions.

Did working on the collaborative campaign differ from how you typically approach campaigns?
Not really. One beautiful thing about Ace & Tate is that they trusted me to look after their campaign, so I sent them a big deck of ideas and presented it and then we went through it and they were really happy with it. Because we shot it in London, I and my team oversaw the production and obviously we’re back and forth with Ace & Tate and I know that they were really happy with it. I think it’s not so different, the only thing that was different is that it was a really nice opportunity to get tight crops because we’re focusing really on someone’s face in a way that in ready-to-wear you don’t necessarily do all the time. So that was lovely. And of course, I’ve researched and looked at lots of Ace & Tate content and want to make sure that what I’m creating exists in their world, too — but brings a new perspective. It’s something that I do with a lot of my collaborations and you know, I’m a film director as well as a creative director in fashion, and doing shoots and assets is one of my favourite parts and I think when people trust me to do, it’s always when we get the best results.

Shop the collaboration here.