Live Beautiful

Hello, 

let me introduce myself, I'm Manuel and everything started with my final thesis at Bocconi university in Milano. 

When I was working on my thesis, I realized that there is a new generation coming (googlers, Mtvers, Youtubers, Chatters, Bloggers), that is somehow connected worldwide. We share a lot, you can take people from all over the world and they would understand each other somehow, all have an Ipod, all plaY playstation, all know Facebook. All of them share the Cool, they call it the Cool generation, the global teenager. They do not really identify in the old stratification of society, they rather live an individualism combined with a feeling of "we". But they still want good products, elegance and style, they just don't want it to be a status symbol. 

I think it somehow is a revolution from the inside. They are not viewed as hippies as in the 60ies, 70ies, these are people who work, earn, try to do good, they grew up with the global challange of global warming, many travelled. 

I also saw a political potential in this generation. The world culture clash (muslim, western etc.) had frightened me for some time, so I tried to find ways on how I could communicate common grounds.  

On television I saw reportages about young people in Iran, Iraq etc. who were on the internet chatting, just like all of us do, and my fears cooled down. I think many people would be calmer if they would know reality better and understand that this new generation has so much in common. We do not want to fight or have wars, we are used to diversitY and embrace it. 

Just think about how many people worldwide use this symbol :-) this is the ultimate common ground globally. At the end of the day no matter what culture we belong to, we all strive for :-) The generation I am refering to uses this symbol in their every day live. It has no language, no culture, no religion, the whole world uses it.

Brands are very powerful. I always felt that somehow as a Marketing operator, I have tools to communicate and I wanted to do that in a responsible way. I wanted to veiculate a positive message with mY brand. 

The brand had to be a celebration of Cultural diversitY in the era of globalization, where people migrate always more, where cultures have to meet on common grounds. 
So I decided the brand to be named StradiversitY. I imagined that people who use StradiversitY may become a better person rather that arrogant or unfriendly. I found that glasses were the perfect tool to veiculate it, because through glasses you see, you have a point of view and maybe you can change it and look at common grounds.....and live beautiful. With this glasses I wanted people to see a person, a human being in front of them, not an enemy just because he may comes from a different culture. 

But unfortunately one month after I registered StradiversitY, I got a letter from the laywers of the Inditex (Zara) group asking me to cancel the registration because it was too similiar to a brand they already owned. As you probably can imagine, I canceled :-) . 

In the meantime I met Paolo Seminara, the designer who created Vogue in the 80ies. In his headquarter in Florence I got fascinated by the glasses he had stored. In those months I also met an architect in Munich who told me an interesting sentence. I asked him: "What is beautiful?" and he simply answered: "Time decides what is beautiful and what is not." So I realized, that vintage glasses had already passed the "time exame".

Many of the vintage brands belong to the status symbol era, but I wanted them to become cool through my store. Maybe you could become a better person instead of arrogant or unfriendly by using them, these products are beautiful its justs that their brand identities sometimes make you become arrogant.

The next challenge was: "How should I call this brand?" 

A few months later I met another designer who had patented a screwless hinge, on which we are still working on. I thought that this hinge gave the temples the opportunity to move like wings, on the inside and on the outside. So the concept of "Guardian angel" came to my mind.

I realized that guardian angels are cross-cultural. Every culture and every major religion has some tradition of guardian angels. 

So I had a brand....:-) 

I would like this vintage glasses to be your guardian angel through which you see a human being in front of you. They will not only protect you from the sun. They will help you to live beautiful.

A Special thanks goes to Melanie Pippa, without her Guardyangel would not have been born.