The Paloceras Method
Eyewear That Remembers Your Dreams
written + interview MONICA DE LUNA
Paloceras spreads across the table as frames bloom from sketches and colors press against translucent daylight. At the center, Mika Matikainen, co-founder and creative force behind the brand, shapes eyewear that grows in his hands, each form a quiet hallucination, a new skin for identity.
The old stable turned studio gathers objects with stories—large sheets of paper, bamboo handles, a loyal Olivetti typewriter humming, sculptures from vanished journeys. Every shelf leans toward experiment, every corner pulses with possibility.
Lines gather mythic form, softening at the edges while lenses shimmer with the quiet promise of change. Mika drifts between drafts, old ideas, bursts of color, textures pulled from the edges of the seasons. Candlelight flickers next to stacked books, loose archives of obsession and plans. Pebble, Velvet Rouge VX, translucent blue, wild honey—each frame gives off a subtle current, a pulse charging the everyday.
Paloceras, named for butterflies and lost afternoons, gathers light and memory in a single gesture. The process moves at its own rhythm, tuned to curiosity and the feel of weight and absence. Limited editions drift out of the stable-studio, carried by collaborations and the slow choreography of design, always searching for a new edge, another fiction, another face. Mika’s practice fills space with resonance, objects settling in the psyche and gently nudging the face toward the unreal. Frames move past accessory, falling into ritual, calling for a new kind of gaze at the reflection in glass. Paloceras skips across language and function, alive in the space between hand and dream, echo and artifact. Eyewear dreams up its own mythology and writes new bodies, all in the flash it takes for a stranger to see themselves—shifted, for a moment, by the promise of another form.
“It’s in our DNA. We imagined something magnetic without limitations, then found ways to make it real. It’s believing in self-transformative distortion in the ordinary. If you feel it, you go for it.”
Mika Matikainen speaks with Monica de Luna
for LE MILE Offline Edition - FW 2025 Nr. 39
Monica de Luna
You design objects that sit on people’s noses and rewrite their entire sense of self in under four seconds. At what point did you realise that glasses are less about vision and more about fiction?
Mika Matikainen
Straight from the beginning, so I would say it’s in our DNA. When it comes to eyewear, it’s all just repeating the same, and to us as outlier designers it felt appalling, so we took a step back, imagined something magnetic without any physical limitations, then scratched our heads finding ways to make it physically possible. But I believe it was worth the hassle for the good of people’s excitement. I really like that you paired fiction and vision, because that’s exactly what it is: believing in magical self-transformative distortion in the ordinary. If you feel it, you go for it.
There’s something about your frames that feels allergic to branding, or drama, even allergic to anything that moves too fast. How do you keep things quiet without making them disappear?
What a question! Maybe by revisiting older drafts, ideas, and concepts quite occasionally with Alexis, my co-founder, and trying to intuitively embrace or focus on details that feel relevant after they’ve had a beauty nap in our design archives. When it comes to a physical design object like eyewear, there are some limitations (that we don’t respect) that set the table for something in which a few creative key decisions define the product. If you just nail the details, it’s not enough.
Do you believe good design should leave a mark, or is it more like perfume, something people can’t quite name but keep turning their heads for anyway?
I’m not a big fan of perfumes, even though I love the conceptual thinking behind them, so yes, definitely a perfume-like floating shadow that absorbs into your psyche when you least expect it.
“Anything that comes from within is genuine and interesting. Time is a subjective pocket of life for each person. Focus on what resonates instead of seeking validation. Resonance to the max.”
Mika Matikainen speaks with Monica de Luna
for LE MILE Offline Edition - FW 2025 Nr. 39
A Paloceras customer walks past their own reflection and forgets it’s them for a second. Is that the point?
Exactly, the whole point is about embracing the paradox of multiple realities simultaneously. I see this as a bigger societal issue when people rationalise themselves into their fact-based truth bubbles. We need imaginary spikes piercing the imaginary bubbles between individuals, thus making life less imaginary through real presence. Those spikes can and should be used also on yourself. PUFF!
Walk us through your studio, what’s always within reach? What’s broken but never thrown out? And what’s there just to remind you that not everything needs a purpose?
Recently, a journalist who visited my studio called this space a Stable Studio, since this used to be a stable for three racehorses. Now, more boringly, it’s a set of two large desks with a lot of shelf space for objects of interest, a repository for ideas. Always within reach: large sheets of paper, ink, brushes, markers, pencils, candles, books. An old, fully functional Olivetti typewriter that just inspires by its presence. A bit broken but not thrown away is a set of bamboo handles and their parts for a bag project that’s been way too long on a to-do list. Objects without purpose are small statues or sculptures from adventures; they light up something in me even though I can’t remember the origins of all of them.
People keep romanticising analog, but most of them still refresh their inbox with two fingers. What’s your relationship with being unreachable/offline?
Love it. Still waiting for the era when it’s possible to transform sensations more directly into something tangible. A small, bitter forest cherry into a frame, or the feeling of wet moss after rain under bare feet as the haptic feel for a product. When you think about it, using digital devices is basically tapping glass or plastic with your fingers for hours. Numbing. Anything else is easily more interesting as a sensory experience. Respecting offline moments alone and with friends, and always having Do Not Disturb mode on.
Do you think your glasses look better on people who don’t smile?
Whatever makes people more themselves is desirable; then it’s up to them if they feel like smiling, writing, observing, or whatever connects them more with themselves. Our dopamine systems are so entertained by external stimuli that we should wear eyewear with mirrors on the inside of lenses to highlight what’s in there. Not AR but AS—as in augmented self.
How do you feel about people calling things “timeless”? It usually sounds like something you say when you’re afraid of death or passing trends. What do you call it instead?
If one is after trends then it’s acceptable to be afraid of death. Anything that comes from within is more genuine and interesting and “timeless”. What is timeless, or time, is a different thing. It’s a subjective pocket of life on each person’s own timeline and means something different for each individual. Briefly, our time is limited so why settle for something ordinary? But to answer the question, I’d focus on sensing what resonates on an individual level instead of relying on external validation points. Resonance to the max!
You live in Finland, does the weather there teach you anything about surfaces?
I’ve also lived elsewhere in Europe—in the UK, Switzerland, Portugal—and what I really appreciate back here in Finland is the stillness, especially outside the urban areas in real connection with nature. Maybe because Finland has one of the oldest bedrocks on the planet, more than three billion years old. Maybe it’s the silent grounding effect it evaporates if one’s open to it. Weather-wise, we have all the seasons quite clearly, so there’s the possibility of experiencing all surfaces with different additions such as water, slush, ice, snow, all in different light and air density conditions. I believe it’s the layer of details and conditions paired with experiences of similar things in other places, through different cultural and climatic lenses.
What do your eyes look for when they’re tired of being fed?
As far as possible, looking at the horizon, the sky, the sea, the leaves of trees. Also just looking around and pausing auto-labeling of what the eyes communicate, and sensing visual surfaces just as they are.
all visuals (c) PALOCERAS