About YARDĒN RÄSA
A brand with a name behind it.
YARDĒN RÄSA is an independently owned eyewear brand founded by Keeneth J. “KJ” Ross. What began as Rasa Sunglasses in 2020 has evolved through years of hands-on work into a more exact expression of how he sees design.
Keeneth J. “KJ” RossFounder & owner
The beginning
It started with $1,200 and a point of view.
Rasa Sunglasses launched in August 2020 from an architectural mood board built around concrete, stone, and clean white space. The first model was intentionally lean: a way to enter eyewear, study the market, and build something real with limited resources.
From product development and creative direction to advertising, fulfillment, and customer care, Ross learned the business by operating it himself. The early years brought growth, but they also exposed the limits of inconsistent outside products and rising costs. The brand needed deeper authorship—not only better presentation.
The evolution
Selection became design.
The shift happened gradually. Around 2021, Canarsie’s early metal detail was replaced by a scarab beetle wing—one of the first clear signs that Rasa was developing its own symbolic and physical language. The Khepri collection followed in 2022, translating that direction across Motown, Canarsie, and Peachtree.
The work kept moving through new frames, a first studio, and international reach. But the larger change was internal: the goal was no longer simply to sell interesting eyewear. It was to create frames that could only come from this brand.
The rebirth
In 2025, the name caught up to the work.
Rasa Sunglasses reemerged as YARDĒN RÄSA in February 2025. The new identity gave a more complete language to a perspective formed through architecture, jewelry, stone, water, artifacts, ancient civilizations, and street culture.
Those references are not used as costume. They sit beneath a modern street-luxury vocabulary—precise, tactile, and self-possessed. The aim is eyewear with the presence of a found object and the discipline of something engineered for the present.
Found, not made.
The design perspective
Some forms feel less invented than remembered. YARDĒN RÄSA draws from enduring proportions and reframes them for the present.
Three milestones
The emergence of YARDĒN RÄSA
A concise record of the moments that changed the direction of the work.
2020
Rasa Sunglasses launches
The brand goes live in August with $1,200, a lean operating model, and an architectural visual foundation.
2022
Khepri establishes the language
The scarab-wing detail becomes part of a coherent collection across Motown, Canarsie, and Peachtree.
2025
YARDĒN RÄSA emerges
Rasa Sunglasses is reborn in February with a more exact name, identity, and design direction.
The work continues
See what the story became.
Explore the current collection and the frames carrying this design language forward.