Eyewear Brand Ace & Tate’s Hypnotic Loop Has a Frame for Every Face

HALAL Studios, the newly launched creative studio of HALAL Amsterdam, starts the year with a bang - a new campaign for leading Dutch eyewear brand Ace & Tate. ‘A Frame For Every Face’ is a multimedia campaign, with the film components directed by one of HALAL’s most exciting emerging directors Camille Boumans, and photography by acclaimed Dutch photographer Nick van Tiem. 

The Ace & Tate’s ‘A Frame for Every Face’ launches today with a media push on social platforms, led by TikTok. Cleverly using a visual device familiar from TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, the new brand film features a diverse cast of characters and appeals to the brand’s core audience of screen-loving Gen Y and Gen Z. The campaign uses motion assets that function as a hypnotic loop, by using the camera to zoom into the eyes of a person wearing the frames, before panning through their eye into another person wearing a different frame. By zooming into the frames the viewer becomes part of a digital world that mirrors the visual lives of Screenagers. 

Ace & Tate was born in Amsterdam, and continues to expand globally with more than 70 stores in cities including fashion centres London, Antwerp and Berlin. Designed in Amsterdam, the glasses are made of top quality materials, yet manage to be both fashionable and affordable. The company also prides itself on its efforts to create a more planet-friendly product, reducing the use of plastic in packaging, and striving for inclusivity in the workplace. In a relatively short time, Ace & Tate have made a big impact in the eyewear category, through a combination of great design, sustainable marketing, inclusivity and affordability.

HALAL Studio’s creative director Pascal Duval collaborated closely with the team at Ace & Tate, to come up with a simple and straightforward creative idea that features a diverse cast of characters, mirroring the diversity of the brand’s eyewear designs, whilst using the visual device of each person’s eye in order to create a hypnotic effect familiar from Tik Tok. 

‘A Frame for Every Face’ was filmed by HALAL’s youngest director, Camille Boumans, whose direction combines modern aesthetics and intimate cinematography. 

Pascal wanted to show multiple faces to represent Ace & Tate, and also demonstrate the brand’s extensive product line. The creative direction of Pascal and Camille showcases the diversity of people who wear Ace & Tate eyewear, and the film features a deep dive into the iris of each character, emphasising how unique each person is and how we all view the world differently.

HALAL’s Nick van Tiem focuses on the same underlying theme of individuality in his photography, which is imbued with human warmth. Nick’s stills for the Ace & Tate campaign celebrate our differences, subtly underlining how the brand doesn't make glasses for one homogenised face, but rather they create designs that can be worn by a cross-section of people. 

Sean Gregory Peron, marketing director Ace & Tate, commented: “A Frame for Every Face is Ace & Tate’s first campaign in 2022. The message speaks for itself- for every face out there, there is a perfect pair of frames at Ace & Tate. We partnered with HALAL Studios, Director Camille Boumans, and Photographer Nick van Tiem to deliver this message in a fresh and modern way. We’re very happy to be HALAL Studios’ first client and look forward to sharing this work with the world!” 

HALAL creative director Pascal Duval added: “The campaign underpins and celebrates a simple concept: Ace & Tate is not made for one face.The creative concept was to show a diverse group of people representing the brand - emphasising the different styles that Ace & Tate offers. Not only am I very proud of the crew for making this shoot happen over the Christmas and New Year period, but I’m also delighted with the way we partnered with Ace & Tate: we came together as a united team to create something stunning. Closing the gap between brands and makers - which is what HALAL Studios is all about.”

Head of HALAL Studios, Caroline Hagoort concludes: “This is our first campaign to go live since we officially launched HALAL Studios in November last year, and I’m incredibly proud of the end result. It’s a great directorial achievement by Camille Boumans, our young female talent who brought this idea to life. Working together with the team at Ace & Tate felt like a true partnership, as we worked in close collaboration with creative talent from both client and HALAL side. This way of working is efficient and transparent, just the way HALAL Studios is intended to be, and the end result - the Ace & Tate campaign - is proof that having creative, strategy and production in-house, and working closely with clients, is the way forward.”