Havaianas Arts

When the team at Havaianas approached me, they already came with a briefing and a central idea: Bhutan, the happiest country in the world. It wasn’t a visual reference, it was a statement.

What does it mean to translate happiness into form?

I immersed myself in Bhutanese culture not in search of patterns to copy, but of a feeling to inhabit. In its
tapestries, I found a kind of diffuse, collective joy, not the loud happiness of celebration, but the quiet happiness of belonging. Fantasies of love, of community, of a world that still believes in enchantment.

That feeling passed through my own filter. Organic lines that grow as if they’ve always known where they’re going. A palette that pulses. The psychedelic illustrative language of the 60's as visual grammar, not as nostalgia, but as method: the belief that an image can hold worlds within worlds. At first glance, you see the flip-flop. Look again, and you begin to discover, hidden within the shapes, fragments of my own universe. Easter eggs that don’t announce themselves, but are there.

The result was three designs conceived in a universal visual language, capable of carrying the feeling of happiness beyond any cultural boundary. The Arts by Cako Martin collection was sold in more than 20 countries.

Love & Lucky ✌️