Nu OriginsBy Aten Ra Style
Husband and wife team Theresa and Akbar Majeed launched their sunglasses company with licensed sports collections with the NBA and expanded into the art space by creating RiseAD (Rise Art&Design), which represents the best of art converging with eyewear.
Their backgrounds are very diverse, with Theresa’s legal experience in the entertainment and fashion industries, and Akbar’s in the sports and marketing industries. They decided to create a family business that allowed them to work together where their collective interests in the arts and the function of fashion would collide.
RiseAD began in Bushwick just as the Brooklyn neighborhood was transforming into the leader of the New York City Art Scene. Additionally, street art began to pop up all over, transforming Bushwick from an industrial wasteland to an open art gallery inside and out of its warehouse spaces. As the Bushwick art scene was growing at a phenomenal pace, it was intensified by the white washing of the city’s foremost street art destination, 5 Points in Queens.
This period served as a great launching pad for the art-inspired brand and led to the launching of its first artist collaboration.
Through its innovative approach to eyewear, RiseAD has created a brand which stands out in a sea of frames mostly made up of a trifecta of black, brown and tortoise that dominate the eyewear landscape. RiseAD is where art meets eyewear. The brand’s signature frame, RAD Aviator, feels and looks like a classic, but offers a fresh twist with a stainless-steel bridge.
The original art on the frames comes from the work RiseAD does with artists. The artists represent multiple mediums, and the brand infuses elements of their work into its frames.
RiseAD is one of the most creative sunglasses brands made for art lovers and fashion forward trendsetters who want to express their individual personalities by wearing art statements on a new canvas.
Some of the collaborative works live in galleries, private collections, museums and even on concrete walls. The brand’s upcoming collaborations include Ghanaian-born 21st Century Master Painter Samuel Adoquei, which will feature a collection from Adoquei’s richly textured still life paintings— Lilies, Oranges, Daffodils
Fashion Director: Aten Ra Style
Contact information:
www.RiseArtDesign.com
info@RiseArtDesign.com
IG: @radeyewear
Photographers: Luis Chimbo and Kenneth Grate, Jr.
