One of the things we aim for as designers is to design products that are timelessly desirable, rather than simply fashionable. That is, we want to design products that are going to be as desirable in 10, 20 or 100 years’ time as they are today.

The fundamental reason for this is that designers are creators of value, and there is more value in things that last 100 years than in things that last 1 year. There are other reasons, too. Ecological reasons, for example: it’s no use making things from recycled materials if they still end up on a trash heap next year just because they look out of fashion.

The big questions, then, are: How do we transcend current fashions? How do we know what people are going to desire in 10, 20 or 100 years’ time? What do we find beautiful today that we will find equally beautiful in the future?

One way to answer these questions is to look at other things that people have found beautiful for centuries. And the best place to look for those, we think, is in nature. To give a simple example: a horse is going to be as beautiful in 100 years’ time as it was 100 years ago. At least, to people who are into horses.

So, we logically turn our eyes to nature, and to biomimicry.

What is biomimicry?

Biomimicry is a school of thought that seeks to answer design problems by observing how plants or animals have evolved to solve them over millions of years, eliminating iterations that didn’t work, and succeeding as a species with iterations that did.

Some examples of biomimicry:

- The Japanese Shinkansen high-speed train, whose designers took inspiration from the kingfisher’s beak in order to optimise the train’s aerodynamics.

- The McLaren P1 hypercar (designed by Frank Stephenson), which was inspired by cheetahs and sailfish to achieve both its unique look and its extraordinary aerodynamic performance.

- The Babyark car seat (also designed by Frank Stephenson), which was inspired by eggs (and woodpeckers!) to achieve the ultimate car safety around your baby.

We recently launched the arena eyewear collection. arena’s heritage is, of course, in swimming. They’ve spent more than half a century helping elite swimmers improve their performance, starting with Mark Spitz all the way back in the ’70s, and more recently with Nicolò Martinenghi at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

And, as it turns out, swimming itself is no stranger to biomimicry. In fact, biomimetic movement is what some of the greatest swim coaches have been teaching swimmers for decades. Gennadi Touretski was a keen observer of nature, known to coach Michael Klim, Alexander Popov and Ian Thorpe to “swim like a fish”. And biomimicry is what led Misty Hyman’s coach Bob Gillett to invent the famous Fish Kick, with which she won the gold medal in the 200m butterfly at the Sydney Olympics.

Hence, it followed quite naturally that we should posit biomimicry as arena eyewear’s guiding design principle. To create our unique collection of sunglasses, Frank Stephenson’s design team studied the shapes and movements of sharks, dolphins and jellyfish. Just like these beautiful oceanic creatures, arena eyewear is “sculpted by water”.

How can we make your eyewear timelessly desirable? Contact us and let’s find out.

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