Gemma Styles on her ‘70s-inspired sunglasses collection inspired by old family photos

Gemma Styles isn’t your average influencer. With a following of nearly six million on Instagram, the 29-year-old (whose younger brother happens to be Harry Styles) talks openly about everything from mental health to climate change and politics.

It makes perfect sense then, that when Styles teamed up with Kenmark Eyewear, she would add her own activist spin to it. Incorporating sustainability and support for mental health research into her Gemma Styles x Kenmark Eyewear collection, Styles has dreamed up six designs named after some of her favorite songs.

“They’re all from a playlist that I made on Spotify called ‘Banger After Banger,’” she said with a laugh. “It’s all of my favorite songs, and I think knowing that the songs were going to be involved somehow, it definitely sort of leaked into my design process,” she explained.

“There’s a lot of ‘70s influences in there - a lot of earth tones and browns and kind of a bit of green and fruity sort of colors - it does feel quite ‘70s summer to me.”

Though Styles shared that she tends to gravitate towards the neutral colors - particularly, the cat eye-shaped ‘Seven Wonders’ in Chestnut, a design from her first collection that she decided to bring back this time - she encourages everyone to have fun with their own picks.

“I think there’s so much less emphasis these days on, ‘I can’t wear that because I don’t have such a face or legs or whatever people try to tell us in magazines,’” Styles said of choosing the right pair. “I think honestly, if you like them and you like them on yourself and you want to be able to wear them, then that’s the most important thing. Feeling confident in what you’re wearing, I think, is always when you’re going to look the best.”

For Styles, the design process began with looking at her own wardrobe. “Definitely a lot of it is what I would wear day-to-day, or when I’ll put an outfit on and say, ‘Oh, what sunglasses do I want to wear?’ Sometimes I just don’t own a pair quite like that,” she said, adding that she created mood boards to draw inspiration as well.

Keeping in mind frames and colors that could work throughout the year was important, too. “I wear sunglasses all year round, so I want to make sure that they’ll work and not sort of sit in a cupboard for nine months out of the year. I love sunglasses with a big winter coat, and a scarf, and a hat - just chuck your big winter coat on and then when you put some sunglasses on that just makes it an outfit,” Styles said.

And while her favorite oldies songs came into play with the whole collection, one moment from the ‘70s helped Styles create her most sentimental addition. “One of the pairs were inspired by a photograph of my nan in the very early ‘70s,” Styles said of ‘The Young Ones.’

“There were a lot of old family photographs at my auntie and uncle’s and they had a load of them digitized, so my cousin Ella was going through them. She sent me one in particular because there was a picture of my mum when she was a little girl, and she was wearing sunglasses that were the same color as a pair from my first collection with Kenmark,” Styles explained.

“We then started going through more pictures, and there was one of my nan with my mum at the beach, and she just looked so cool stood there with her sunglasses on,” she said of designing a pair of sunglasses similar to those her grandmother had worn.

“I was fairly young when she died, and I do remember her, but it’s always nice to try and sort of find ways to feel more connected to members of your family in that way. And I just thought it would be really nice if me and my mum and my cousin and my auntie could all sort of wear sunglasses that were very similar to hers.”

With her collection, Styles also wanted to give back, choosing to support mental health research by donating 10% of the proceeds from her ‘Don’t Stop’ design. “When I have the privilege to be able to put something out like this, I want it to have a charitable element to it,” she said, noting that she has dealt with depression and anxiety.

“Research is something that I always want to get behind because it can be frustrating to be suffering from mental health issues and not only be looking for support, but also not really understand why that happened to you in the first place,” she said.

“I think coming at it from a research perspective for lots of types of mental health conditions, if we can understand why they develop, then we can try and stop people having to suffer with these issues in the first place - that’s something that I hope I can, in a small way, help to get towards.”

Making sustainable choices is another conscious effort Styles makes in her own day-to-day life, and the former science teacher wanted those efforts to reflect in her Kenmark collection.

“I don’t think anybody ever gets it perfect, and it is something that you can always be improving on in small ways. But because I’m thinking more about what I am buying and consuming, when I’m then turning that around to put something out, I obviously want it to be something that is as sustainable as possible,” she said.

“Trying to make things that are going to be good quality and last people a long time is something that’s important to me - I don’t want to make a pair of $10 sunglasses that are going to break after two weeks and end up in the bin. Making sure that you look after the things in your wardrobe so they last a long time is one of the main ways that you can be more sustainable in your shopping.”

For her own collection, Styles explained that all of the glasses were made in an energy-conscious factory that uses 80% renewable energy.

Additionally, Styles and Kenmark found ways to make the products themselves more sustainable. “All of the components in the individual sunglass cases are recyclable, and the travel case that we’re doing is made from recycled plastic bottles, so that’s saving more plastic from landfill,” she added.

“And then in terms of shipping and packaging, we’ve tried to make sure that it’s all recyclable materials that we’re putting out and materials that will break down. Also, communicating as clearly as possible with the customers about how to then dispose of their packing materials once they receive them,” she said of the importance of including instructions on how to properly recycle even the smallest pieces.

“Sometimes people will end up throwing things away that could be recycled just because they don’t know where to put them - if someone doesn’t tell you what to do with a small piece of plastic in a box, you’re not going to know.”