Avinyó, fifteen years in dialogue with art

Text by Aitor Salinas, Photography by Daniel Riera, Creative Direction by Dust Creative

The eyewear brand celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of its Avinyó model, inspired by one of Barcelona’s most emblematic streets, as a symbol of its commitment to art.

Avinyó Street in Barcelona cuts through a neighborhood that, in reality, does not exist. Five Gothic buildings gave rise in 1927 to an entire district that is, in fact, a fiction. But if the Gothic Quarter was a tourist invention to rename what had previously been known as the Cathedral district, it also stands as proof that Barcelona is a city that has always created itself.

That spirit of reinvention that runs through the streets of the Catalan capital in general—and Avinyó in particular—is precisely where the Etnia Barcelona model that bears its name finds its origin. A frame that, on its fifteenth anniversary, can claim to have moved beyond its status as an accessory to become a symbol: first of the city in which it was born, but also of the way the brand understands eyewear as a cultural object.

Founded in 2001, Etnia Barcelona emerged with the ambition of bringing together art, design and colour—and, above all, of doing so outside a purely commercial logic. Its team, which has always worked under full control of the creative process, keeps an ongoing conversation with contemporary culture alive, in which colour, design and form are not merely tools but the foundations for building an identity in constant transformation.

The Avinyó model is one of the purest distillations of that vision—and also one of the earliest. Since its launch, Etnia Barcelona has continued to search for new ways to express its commitment to design. Over the past fifteen years, Avinyó has evolved through more than six versions, incorporating new techniques, materials and processes, and appearing in 48 different colors—a number that confirms it as a central language within the brand.

That commitment has always been present, accompanying the trajectory of both the brand and the model. Editions dedicated to Nobuyoshi Araki, Yves Klein and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the project Wild Love in Africa, form a structural part of the brand’s identity. It is no coincidence that the first of these editions emerged in collaboration with the convergence of creative worlds embodied by the Sónar festival.

In 2026, Avinyó celebrates continuity. An attitude, a perspective and a process. Time unfolds here as a space in constant construction, where each new version enters into dialogue with the previous one without repeating it. Fifteen years, six iterations of the model, and countless new techniques, materials and colours later, the Avinyó frame has evolved while preserving its essence. Alive like the cultural landscape it both shapes and inhabits. Suspended within the same transformative current that nourishes its city. Evolving, much like Picasso’s gaze. Because Etnia Barcelona, like its city—and like the painter—has always continued to reinvent itself.