Eyestylist

l.a. Eyeworks has announced the death of Barbara McReynolds, co-founder/designer of l.a.Eyeworks. She was 78.

McReynolds was born on 26th December, 1946, in Huntington Beach, California. Co-founders of l.a. Eyeworks, McReynolds and Gai Gherardi first met each other in the halls of the surf city’s eponymous high school, the pair bonding instantly over folk music and eyewear.

Glasses were an obsession for both. So much so that a teen McReynolds with 20/20 vision faked an eye exam, and, after months of taxing her optometrist to find the perfect frames, scored a job in his office. When the doctor opened a branch near UC Irvine in 1965, McReynolds hooked up Gherardi with employment there.

When the duo opened the Melrose “mothership” on 9th September, 1979, McReynolds, in an interview, recalled: “We embraced the impulsive energy of those times. There was a big shift going on, and we were happily playing on the fringe as our image came into being. The store was the cauldron where we could cook up our ideas freely.” The innovative frontier of l.a.Eyeworks was made evident in window displays that rarely showed glasses, and instead, featured thought-provoking, double-entendre messages, and site-specific installations with commissioned artists, characterised by offbeat humour, agitprop, and celebration of the absurd to comment on culture, gender, and socio-political topics. Many of l.a.Eyeworks’ signature catchphrases – Uncensored Visions, Keep Fishing, Elect to Think, See Through Walls – had their genesis in the window culture of the Melrose Avenue flagship.

Within months of opening, they submitted a sketch to a French eyewear maker: a classic silhouette that nodded to sunglasses worn by southern California lifeguards. They christened the unisex style “The Beat.” Hundreds of influential, original frame designs in expressive colourways have followed, made in Europe and Asia according to the highest standards in the marketplace.

In 1984, a wholesale division, Eyeworks 3, launched with founding partner Margo Willits and an office in France, to distribute the line to independent optical boutiques worldwide.

McReynolds and Gherardi were both members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Their distinctive frames have been exhibited at the London Design Museum, the London Craft Council, the Los Angeles Craft Museum, the London College of Fashion, and the Chicago Athenaeum, among others. For the first time in its history in 1991, the Stanford Conference on

Design acknowledged l.a.Eyeworks’ optical designs under the industrial design category—an important break for the founding duo and for the eyewear industry. In 1992, they received the Gold Award for product design from International Design Magazine. The brand’s credits in Hollywood and music are significant, including cult classics such as “Thelma and Louise” and “The Matrix.” But it’s the shopfront’s representation, albeit apocalyptic, in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” that continues to send fans emailing the company to this day.

Forays into creative collaborations have proven limitless, from programming to architecture to merchandising. In contrast to Gorman’s high-contrast, timeless portraits, l.a.Eyeworks launched the Technicolor “Uncensored Visions” ad campaign in 2019. Shot by LA lensman Josef Jasso, it has featured electroclash artist Peaches, drag star Murray Hill, theremin virtuoso Armen Ra, and LA punk icon Alice Bag.

Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger, Isaac Julien, and, most recently, Gabriela Ruiz are among the established and rising artists whose work appears among the annual collector series of lens cleaning cloths, first put in motion in 2009.

“Barbara and Gai’s vision for l.a.Eyeworks was to build an endlessly expansive, independent platform for the exploration of ideas from all directions,” notes Margo Willits, International Sales Manager and founding partner of l.a.Eyeworks. “The locus of that dream was eyewear; but the vision was ecstatically 360 degrees, and it will be truly exciting to watch l.a.Eyeworks grow and evolve into the future.”

That future nears as the company readies a new retail flagship in a campus-like setting on Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood – slated to open in June 2025. An open house event to honour the lives and legacy of both l.a.Eyeworks co-founders (Gai Gherardi passed away eight weeks ago on 16th March 16, 2025 https://www.eyestylist.com/2025/03/gai-gherardi-l-a-eyeworks-1946-2025/) is scheduled for Saturday 14th June. Find more details at www.laeyeworks.com 

Photography credit: Karin Levitas