9 minute read
Hoet Couture –Personalized
High-End Eyewear
3D-printed Titanium Frames For The Fashion-conscious
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Hoet is a family of designers and opticians whose history dates back to 1884. The current team, led by Bieke Hoet, has over 30 years of experience designing high-end eyewear for prestigious brands worldwide. The company's premium brand, HOET COUTURE, launched its 3D laser-printed eyeglasses made of titanium in 2014 after four years of research and development.
The frames are made of titanium, with an open structure on the front that varies per model, making it nearly impossible to achieve with traditional production techniques. The glasses are eco-friendly, with almost zero raw material waste.
Avoiding overproduction that cannot be sold later is another environmentally friendly aspect. HOET COUTURE frames are modern, rust-proof, anti-allergenic, light, durable, and well-fitting.
The brand offers 17 models of couture eyeglasses. The models are available in various size combinations for nose and glasses. Each pair of eyeglasses can be personalized with the client’s name engraved on the temple. What sets HOET COUTURE apart from other brands is its 3D print technology, which needs no special tools for different models and sizes. A 3D computer drawing is sufficient, and you only need to purchase the show model in titanium and a few synthetic dummies in various sizes to determine the best size for your clients. The demand-oriented production eliminates overstocking and reduces the risk of unsold stock.
The Belgian brand’s eyewear is designed to be conspicuously inconspicuous and inconspicuously conspicuous. Quality, style and comfort are fundamental to the brand’s precepts and the mission is to provide customers with personalized eyewear that’s both comfortable and eco-friendly. From now on, selected models from HOET COUTURE can also be virtually tried on at FAVR.
The label HOET COUTURE was founded in 2014 by Bieke Hoet. The design agency HOET DESIGN, which develops eyewear designs for many labels, was already firmly established in the market by then. In the following interview, Bieke talks about her role in the company, the influence of Bruges on her designs and the relationship between HOET DESIGN and HOET COUTURE
Hello Bieke, your company roots back to 1884! Can you tell us really briefly how HOET COUTURE came about?
Of course, it is a long story… In 1973, when I was born, my father started working in the optical shop in Bruges together with his mother who continued the shop after my grandfather passed away at a young age. Many generations of fathers in my family have run optical shops, and the traces of our business go back to 1884. When I and my sisters reached a certain age, my mother joined the shop. In 1989, my parents, both very ambitious, decided to start their own brand, THEO, an anagram of HOET, together with Wim Somers and his wife Jamme. They funded the start-up with the income from their optical shops. At that time, I was still in school and saw their dream come true from a distance. In 1997, my father decided to focus solely on creating designs for THEO, and 26 years later, he is still responsible for a great deal of THEO’s designs. Meanwhile, the Somers family concentrated on building the brand and making it successful worldwide, and the optical shop of HOET was continued by my mother and later by my sister and her husband. With a passion for development and an uncontainable drive for creativity, the eyewear design agency HOET DESIGN was founded in 1997. That is when I joined my father at the age of 24 and got involved in the creative process. 17 years later, the HOET COUTURE brand is born, launched by the design agency of the same name.
What is your role in the company and what do you do on a daily basis?
In 2020, I took over the HOET EYEWEAR DESIGN company and the HOET COUTURE brand, where nothing has changed except for the fact that I am now the boss. I keep investing in new technologies and materials to feed the HOET COUTURE collection and give it all the opportunities to grow in the right direction, making no concessions on design and maximizing the features of available technologies, materials, and finishes. At the same time, I invest in people who want to be part of this exciting journey and want to help me make this dream come true. I am grateful to be surrounded by talented and committed people.
Bruges is not your average location for an eyewear company. What’s your relationship to the city and how does it influence your designs?
Bruges is a medieval city, also called the Venice of the North. I invite all opticians to come and visit us. Our location is historically grown. I am born and raised in Bruges. My family and friends all live in Bruges. With my parents, I was lucky to discover the world together with their ambitions to grow their business. Today we manufacture our frames in Bruges. It is giving some benefits to have production so close to our offices. However, for the future, I believe in a manufacturing that is close to the location where frames are sold. 3D printing allows this idea. Let’s see what the future brings…
Is there such a thing as a typical Belgian eyewear design and do you think HOET COUTURE belongs to it?
A lot of Belgian designers are active in companies worldwide outside our industry. Raf Simons for Prada and previously for Dior, for example. Dirk van Braeckel, known for designing various models for Volkswagen Group, especially for the Bentley brand. A cultural heritage and talent to translate emotions into things we can touch and feel is what makes Belgian design recognizable. This is also my personal goal, and I guess if I may speak for my father, I am pretty confident that he shares this mindset. You’re running both the design agency HOET DESIGN and the brand HOET COUTURE. Conflict of interest or mutual benefit? How do the two fields cross- pollinate each other?
In the search for new technologies and applications, I find solutions that benefit the styling and vision of HOET COUTURE that targets a group of people that wants to be unobtrusively noticeable. Targeting a different group of people makes us use different tools. Combinations of traditional and new technologies often create new opportunities, and these are not always suitable for the HOET COUTURE brand. As a designer, we are at the beginning of the existence of a product and, therefore, have control over the outcome. It is completely in our own hands to choose for mutual benefit rather than a conflict of interest. I am open to the projects that are challenging, offering added value for the companies we work for. We never stop learning because life never stops teaching.
You’ve mentioned before that you put in four years of research and development before starting the brand. What was your main focus in that regard? What did you want to get perfectly right?
Limitations stimulate creativity. Just like all technologies, we needed to understand the limitation to find a creative solution on how to make functional glasses with this new technology. For example, how to avoid welded parts, how to reduce subcontractors. Finding out that the perforations allow some flexibility and make it possible to work with an open rim for the lens mounting, that we could build integrated moveable nose pads. These are only a few of the topics that needed a different approach. Ultimately, we figured out how to design intelligently and make eyewear that couldn’t be made any other way.
Your price range is on the upper end. How does that reflect in the way your customers approach your brand and their decisionmaking process?
We have chosen a durable business model. Starting production on demand in different sizes and engraving the name of our customer makes every piece unique. As a result, there is no or almost no unsold stock with us or at the optician. Together with a timeless design, we offer value for money. Buy different, choose less, and make it last. This vision is shared by our opticians and the end-consumer. You focus strongly on 3D-printing as a manufacturing tool. When did you first discover the technology, and why do you like it so much?
I discovered 3D printing in 2010 when I was around 35 years old. It was the first time I saw a technology that makes something by adding material instead of subtracting material. Just like in nature, a tree grows, a product can grow layer by layer. To create one frame, it takes 9 hours to print one frame in 3000 layers, and 5 hours to finish the frame manually. Materials are expanding, printers go faster, and post-process technologies are growing, and this is only the beginning. Adding material to create something means a new freedom of design. Designing eyewear that cannot be made in any other way is the challenge we were willing to take. Maximizing the benefits that this technology is offering. Do you have a particular type of wearer in mind when you design eyeglasses?
The HOET COUTURE wearer is somebody who wants to be unobtrusively noticeable.
How is the 3D-print-based concept received by opticians considering that they basically have no stock from HOET COUTURE and a completely different workflow?
You have to weigh between a one-time investment in a toolbox with a selection of timeless designs that can be amortized over several years, allowing you to realize profits and reduce your inventory risk to zero...
And?
And in a situation where you invest in inventory, some of which you know will never be sold each season, stored in the basement or returned to the supplier with the obligation to place a new order, some of which, again, will never be sold. A fastfashion business model. From a financial point of view, the profit for both situations will be more or less similar. From a socialethical point of view, the on-demand manufacturing is a strong additional USP for the optician to offer to his consumer. The on-demand manufacturing at a higher price level works perfectly if it is in addition to a selection of small unique designer brands distributed in a traditional way. www.hoet.be
Please elaborate on your nice claim: “Conspicuously inconspicuous and inconspicuously conspicuous”. What’s important to you in terms of “conspicuousness”?
I would rather answer differently as inconspicuous leans more towards our own personality and therefore also the wearer of our frames. However, he or she is definitely not boring.
A
photos RAPHAEL SCHMITZ
Biotate Eyewear with Fashion Attitude
Marc O’Polo 2023 Highlights
In recent years, new materials and manufacturing processes have attracted attention in the design and production of eyewear – sometimes with considerable success. Nevertheless, there are still classics and evergreens that still score points with the wearer today thanks to their material properties and that are indispensable in the displays of opticians. In addition to titanium and horn, this is above all acetate. This premium material has also played a dominant role in MARC O’POLO’s collections for a long time. Cellulose acetate is produced mainly from cotton and wood materials. The benefits: the material is very durable, temperature resistant, flexible and therefore comfortable to wear over a long period of time. Cellulose acetate has an intense and more aesthetic appearance and allows a wider range of bright and luminous colors than other plastics.
MARC O’POLO has also asked itself how to preserve the benefits of acetate for the eyewear wearer while reducing its environmental footprint throughout the product lifecycle. The answer at the fashion brand: Biotate!
Biotate is a bio-based acetate that is produced and made from natural and renewable resources, helping to reduce dependence on limited fossil resources and CO2 emissions – all while reducing toxicity. All Biotate production takes place in the company’s own factory, from granules to finished acetate sheet.
But it’s not just in production that the sustainable models score with tremendous advantages; even after the glasses have been used, for example, they are also biodegradable. The material decomposes over time through the action of biological organisms and processes, reducing overall waste. Biotate can be broken down into nontoxic components and returns to the natural environment through decomposition. Biotate also produces much less greenhouse gas than petroleum-based plastic products.
It remains to be mentioned that MARC O’POLO does not have to compromise on color with Biotate either. Most colors work without restrictions even with the bio-based acetate. The dyeing process is carried out with pigments based on vegetable oil. Biotate also gives MARC O’POLO designers a free hand when it comes to the design language, as the styles of the models we have staged impressively demonstrate. 3-dimensional designs, such as the cateyeshape of »506195«, can be realized just as well with Biotate as material mixes, such as the model »505111« shown here. eschenbach-eyewear.com
