Daniel Beckerman has style dialed in. He launched his fashion eyewear brainchild, RetroSuperFuture, in 2007 after a successful run as an independent music magazine publisher in Italy.

Since then, the brand—synonymous with well-priced and wildly hip colorful acetate sunwear—has become a style icon with a trendsetter following and collabs with fashion notables such as Off-White, SUNNEI, and Andy Warhol.

“The cool thing about eyewear that we always appreciate is that it’s not simply fashion. It is industrial design, fashion, and medical wear all in one.”

—Sean Michael Beolchini

Here, Beckerman and RetroSuperFuture Creative Director Sean Michael Beolchini sit down with EB to share their vision.

EB: How did RetroSuperFuture come into being?

Daniel Beckerman: I was doing a fashion-and-music magazine [PIG] in Italy, and Sean came on board. We felt that in the market at the time there wasn’t an eyewear brand that was representing the trend leaders and trendsetters.

I thought, why not try this venture? We have [backgrounds] in artistic studies and industrial design. We had a graphics company so we knew how to use software technology and sketches. We put all of the pieces of the puzzle together for a fashion eyewear brand.

EB: What is RetroSuperFuture’s design ethos?

Sean Michael Beolchini: We have a solid DNA code that we always need to have in every single frame. RetroSuperFuture needs to be absolutely wearable—we do not want to make eyewear that makes you look ridiculous. We rarely find in the business today a brand that has this kind of Italian quality and attention to detail at this honest price.

EB: Please tell us about the optical collection.

DB: We started on the sun side with high-quality materials—Italian acetate, Zeiss lenses, and Italian manufacturing.

Three years ago, we started the optical line with the mission to bring the same fresh coolness. Before, we had about 3% optical sales. Now, we have around 25%.

EB: What are RetroSuperFuture’s key looks for the season?

SMB: RetroSuperFuture was born and always characterized by its thick acetate eyewear design. [For SS19], we’ve gone thicker, we’ve mixed and matched different colors, and we’re molding it in a way that makes it stand out in all different cuts.

For our seasonal collections, it's not about offering something out of this world, it’s about offering something right for that precise moment.

It’s definitely a comeback of pop colors—hot pink, hot blue, purple. We think that the next trend will be the comeback of the wraparound.

EB: Where did RetroSuper-Future’s name come from?

DB: It has translated from a word that Sean had invented for the magazine—Retrosuperfuture. I thought it represented perfectly what we were doing and what we were trying to create—a product that’s learning from the past, projecting on the future, and it was super.