The idea for FLTRs originated from the concept behind Instagram, and the many filters used to aesthetically enhance your favorite photos. In the late 2000’s, Mayfair, X Pro II, Early Bird, and Nashville were some of the most popular filters to edit your photos, before sending them off to share with your friends and followers. Photo editing apps weren’t all that common yet, and Instagram made it easy to give your photo a finishing touch to look as if it had been professionally edited. 

When designing FLTRs, we wanted to make something that people would put on and say “Wow!” Something that hadn’t been done before, that would bring that same aesthetic of Instagram filters to the real world. One important aspect of filters that we wanted to implement into the glasses was a vignette-style gradient, making the edges of the lens darker than the middle. This draws more attention to the center of the user’s focus, while fading out elements outside of that. The lighter middle tends to make the things you’re looking at “pop” a bit more, and actually has a very aesthetic feel to it. Many prototypes were developed, and FLTRs evolved into using a top-down multi-gradient, meaning the tops and bottoms of the lenses were darker. We took this one step further, and added carefully coordinated blends of colors to both ends of the spectrum, to fit the style of each of FLTR’s unique lenses.

Aloha, Resol, and Lago are the original three lenses we created and launched in 2017. Since launching our first pairs to the market, we have received feedback from many of our customers, and have been working on developing these lenses further. With over three years of perfecting the shading, coloring, and other lens details, we are now excited to be launching our second iteration of FLTR Glasses, and the Aloha II lenses!