Karina wears surreal veggie aesthetics? Gentle Monster turns folding glasses into the quirkiest chic accessory!
The 2026 Veggie collection is here!
GENTLE MONSTER has once again turned eyewear into a surreal fashion experiment. The brand has officially launched its new 2026 Veggie collection, drawing on vegetables as its central inspiration and translating tomatoes, stems, leaves, and natural forms into details for folding eyewear. Bold colors, organic lines, and architectural silhouettes create a new visual language that falls somewhere between futuristic and delightfully strange. aespa member Karina and actor Yu Shi front the campaign, allowing the collection to once again showcase GENTLE MONSTER’s consistently unpredictable aesthetic, from the products to its entire worldview.
- Related reading: Blue Elephant’s Gentle Monster plagiarism case: representative arrested, all 150,000 items of inventory seized in a plot straight out of a movie
Turning vegetables into stylish accessories, GENTLE MONSTER pushes the boundaries of imagination once again
View this post on Instagram
What makes the Veggie collection so compelling is that the brand doesn’t directly replicate vegetable elements, instead deconstructing them in a more abstract way. From the frame shapes to the temple details, the designs reinterpret the forms and colors of vegetables. Some extend the lines of stems and leaves into sculptural silhouettes, while others use vivid greens and reds alongside irregular curves to create a surreal sense of vitality. The collection features 10 styles of folding eyewear that retain practicality and structural stability while making the folding design itself feel more like a fashion object you can carry with you.
Karina makes offbeat aesthetics look their most stylish
View this post on Instagram
As one of the faces of this campaign, Karina once again shows the futuristic sensibility she shares with GENTLE MONSTER. Set against a barren landscape, the visuals use surreal staging to turn the relationship between tomatoes, vegetables, and the figure into an offbeat fashion narrative. Karina’s almost obsessive gaze at the tomato also gives the imagery a dreamlike sense of unreality. This installation art-inspired approach to the shoot once again proves that GENTLE MONSTER has never simply released eyewear; it builds a complete aesthetic universe.
Giant tomatoes and Veggiemon creatures turn the pop-up spaces into surreal farms
View this post on Instagram
Beyond the collection itself, GENTLE MONSTER has also launched limited-time pop-up spaces in six cities around the world. Inspired by farms and pastoral landscapes, the spaces use giant tomato installations and fantastical vegetable creatures called “Veggiemon” to create an immersive setting full of humor and strangeness. Some locations also include interactive photo installations that let visitors become different Veggiemon characters, further extending the collection’s imaginative world.
From AI-inspired futuristic aesthetics to today’s surreal vegetable universe, GENTLE MONSTER continues to redefine fashion accessories in ways that are hard to define. The 2026 Veggie collection is more than a new line of folding eyewear; it is an art experiment that blends nature, living creatures, strangeness, and futurism. When Karina puts on those tomato-inspired glasses, it makes one thing clear again: GENTLE MONSTER’s greatest strength may never have been the eyewear itself, but its ability to draw people into its imaginative world.
Join Popbee Circle and subscribe to the Popbee newsletter for the latest updates, plus early access to exclusive perks and discounts! Beyond this article, here are a few recent stories worth checking out:
- Turning the most annoying thing about drinking water into a cute surprise: Bangkok design brand ELMTOLI turns the water at the bottom of your glass into a smiley face!
- Wear your childhood memories on your fingertip with the Tamagotchi ring, turning the classic virtual pet game into a ring
- Kiko Mizuhara shows the first coyseio 038 collection, turning elevator looks into an everyday outfit bible