Ace & Tate, The Graduates collection
Last Thursday, Sleek was delighted to be invited to a sneak peek of Ace & Tate’s summer residency in partnership with Studio Droog. The opticals brand and renowned design company both hail from Amsterdam, have a penchant for quality and an aptitude for customer focus, but the unique pop-up store and series of events and dinners coming up at Hotel Droog is a first for Ace & Tate. The online brand is barely a year old and founded on the premise that a beautifully framed face doesn’t need an eye-wateringly high price tag.
Co-founder Mark de Lange’s background is in startup investing (from mobile contact syncing to software for TV set-top boxes) but his eureka moment came after a trip to the States where he bought a pair of “beautiful but expensive Oliver Peoples frames”. De Lange was tickled to come home to a closet full of sneakers: “It struck me that you can dress for anything but still have to wear that one pair of frames to the office or at a wedding or a party. They’re a pretty striking accessory – it’s literally the first thing people see.”
Barely a year later and Ace & Tate are disrupting the industry by cutting out the “many unnecessary links between production and customer”. According to Mark, “margins in the optical industry are traditionally very high” so if you take those down and remove some of the middlemen in wholesale, retail and brand licensing, you end up with “the same product, from the same factory but at a more accessible price point”.
Ace & Tate, The Graduates collection popup at Studio Droog, Amsterdam
Named for the cellulose acetate that composes the majority of their products, Ace & Tate frames are all designed by the small studio team in Amsterdam and produced in Italy. The company has grown from four to fifteen in the last twelve months and the latest collection is a celebration of this growth and fresh ambition. This collection is also named for, and partly inspired by, the 1967 classic film, “The Graduate”.
The slick campaign for the new collection was shot by Jeroen W. Mantel and adds colour to the elegant De Stijl style fittings designed by Studio Droog for the brand’s summer-long pop-up shop. The project is characteristic of the creative synergy Ace & Tate embrace.
As Mr McGuire tells Benjamin Braddock in the classic film the latest collection is named for: “There’s a great future in plastics”. This is certainly the case for Ace & Tate.
“Let’s Make A Spectacle!”, Ace & Tate’s summer in residence will run from June until August at Hotel Droog, Amsterdam
Text by Ella Plevin