A rising French-made luxury label with a contemporary Parisian sensibility – new sunglass styles in the men’s collection revealed
Leimann Eyewear, a rising name in luxury frames, has created limited edition frames for the season, including a men’s selection of sunglasses that strike a note of elegance and modernity, for a very discerning man. Custom blending exclusive “noble” materials including fine-jewellery alloys which they say have an unexpected lightness and durability, the statement shapes for men range from oversized acetate to thin rimmed metals where much consideration is given to detail, colour subtleties and the matching gradient tones of the lens. Above: an example of a limited edition metal design by Leimann Eyewear, the LEIM V style has a rectangular eye shape which is softened with rounded corners; a hint of a more lavish luxury style is visible in the nose bridge design. The frame is made from one single piece of metal and has filigree engraved temples
Original and powerful in its design, the LEIM X11 frame has a large yet wearable square shape produced in a smart 8mm thick acetate material with a sturdy metal core and fitted with sun lenses created in a thermoplastic recyclable material with anti-reflective and hydrophobic treatment as well as 100% UVA/UVB protection.
About the brand: Created in 2020, Leimann Eyewear is an independent Luxury Eyewear brand producing limited edition, handmade frames for men and women in France from noble materials and alloys which have been researched to offer an unexpected lightness and durability. Each model is conceived by revisiting the iconic lines of high-class vintage eyewear and bringing them up to date with particular attention to detail. As part of French tradition and know-how, Leimann frames also aim to magnify the style and personality of the wearer. Photography above by @guillaume.malheiro.
Find out more about the collections at https://leimann.fr
Summer showcase: Morel recycled acetate range
The French company is producing new styles in 100% recycled acetate
Recycled materials are trending in eyewear, with more and more designers and eyewear companies exploring how they can create more sustainable design. The French eyewear company Morel has announced its commitment to this development, through a local partnership with Decoracet, a well-known French acetate manufacturer with recycling know-how and the ability to create new acetate sheets via thermo-compression of granules from acetate scraps. The colourful sheets have a marbled pattern and colour variations that have an interesting mix of tones and transparencies, not dissimilar to a classical tortoiseshell finish.
Morel’s recycled concept Valerien is based on one of their classic frames, the Tydée design. The style offers a variety of shapes, colours and finishes with confident colorations and subtle plays of transparency, designed to bring character and a contemporary feel to each frame. Find out more at www.morel-france.com
Eyestylist exclusive: a visit to RES/REI, Treviso, Italy
The Italian eyewear design company RES/REI is located near the historic town of Treviso in the Veneto (Italy). Invited to visit their HQ, studios and production department with a small group of Danish and Swedish opticians, we had the opportunity to learn about their unique style of making their frames. The company has a close relationship with Mazzucchelli 1849, with whom they create artistic custom colours and patterns that contribute to the signature looks of RES/REI eyewear.
Situated in the green countryside outside Treviso, Veneto (prosecco country), RES/REI is a unique eyewear producer, balancing with artistry the traditions and passions of making Italian eyewear, with a contemporary, youthful mindset and innovative talent for design. Founder Oliviero Zanon, and a small team do close to every stage of the creative process and production at the location in the Veneto, with a few specialised steps outsourced to very local Veneto specialists. Particularly revered by opticians for their colours, the custom acetate hues and sophisticated patterns developed with Mazzucchelli 1849 create eye-catching design pieces with playfully stylistic combinations and finishes. Above: Oliviero Zanon shows Danish and Swedish independent opticians their colour archive and particular steps for developing colours and mixes of colours in the RES/REI collection (May 2023).
Requiring multiple steps for the design and production of the eyewear, the creative process begins in the HQ in Treviso, where Oliviero and team sketch designs and ideas for details and materials for each individual frame in a collection. The company is proud to have created its own carefully preserved archive of acetate samples of different patterns and colours used through the years, which now acts as a reference point and powerful inspiration for everything new they create. Prototypes of every single frame are also created in-house, ensuring that the colour combinations, gradients and patterns replicate the artistic nuances and intensity of colour required.
During the visit to HQ in May, the group toured the production rooms at RES/REI, developed over years to provide the perfect combination of manufacturing processes and hand-finishing. High-tech machinery is used for section cutting, section bonding (for example, for combining or “bonding” different colours) and nose piece bonding. Other steps in the first phase of production include the precision cutting of the fronts, and the tumbling of fronts and temples, a traditional technique used to smooth and enhance the surfaces of individual parts.
Production continues with many other precise phases including the fitting of the various parts of the frame, the bending stage to achieve the perfect curvature of the design and the hand polishing and finishing stages – all requiring human interaction, artisan expertise and know-how to achieve the finest possible results.
Model Copper in the Spring/Summer 2023 collection illustrates the complexity of the colours combinations and the refinement of a gradient effect. The metal temple core is enriched with a finely detailed engraving that is visible to the eye from within the clear acetate.
Through their particular ways of laminating the colours, working the acetate details and playing with the possibilities of colour, translucency and surface finishing all at once, RES/REI achieves a one-of-a-kind product style, firmly rooted in Italian spectacle-making tradition but all the while innovating with a modern point of view to reflect the avantgarde. To view the full collection at RES/REI, visit www.resrei.com
Eyestylist was invited to attend the event at RES/REI in early May 2023 with a group of visiting opticians from Sweden and Denmark. We also took a memorable trip by invitation to RES/REI’s acetate supplier, the world-renowned Mazzuchelli 1849 (www.mazzucchelli1849.it). We stayed at the hotel B&B Hotel Treviso in the centre of the historic city of Treviso. Eyestylist wishes to thank both RES/REI and Mazzucchelli 1849 for their kind hospitality.
Ahlem has opened in Paris
The new boutique is located in Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Ahlem Manai-Platt, the Paris-born designer behind eponymous eyewear label Ahlem, brings her chic eyewear vision to Paris, with the opening of her own branded store. The new boutique is her first in Europe and fourth globally – joining sister stores in Venice California, NYC’s Nolita and San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. Above: the store front of the new Ahlem boutique in Paris
AHLEM’s Paris store is located at 9 rue du Dragon in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an historic culturally rich neighbourhood known for its upscale shopping and dining experiences. The interior, imagined by Stockholm-based design agency Specific Generic, draws inspiration from the aesthetic encounter between two of Ahlem Manai-Platt’s favorite modernists: Constantin Brâncuși and Isamu Noguchi. Using Noguchi’s 1927 drawing “Paris Abstraction” as a reference point, the interior has been designed to balance voids and built structures, incorporating natural materials such as glass, walnut, metal, concrete and plaster. Elements of craftsmanship, including sculpted plaster and hammered wood, are also featured. The space also features an ultra-luxurious “boudoir de marque” conceived as an intimate refuge for custom frames, individual consultations and private viewings. According to the designer, the new store establishes a brand presence in Ahlem Manai- Platt’s hometown and current city of residence, which has been a fundamental creative influence on her work from the very beginning. For more details about the brand visit www.ahlemeyewear.com / Photography by Michael A. Bandassak
9 rue du Dragon, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, France
Elena Orsi Mazzucchelli, Mazzucchelli 1849
Italy’s historic producer of cellulose acetate, Mazzucchelli 1849 is held in high esteem across the optical industry for its beautiful richly coloured creative acetate materials, which include the sustainable Bioplastic M49. During a visit to the Mazzucchelli factory in Castiglione Olona this month, arranged by Italian independent label RES/REI (www.resrei.com) – a company that works closely with Mazzucchelli to create its own custom acetate colours – Eyestylist spoke to Elena Orsi Mazzucchelli, one of several members of the Mazzucchelli family at the helm of the day-to-day running of the business today. Trained as a lawyer, Elena works at Mazzucchelli HQ as Product Development Manager, CENTRO O Group – in the creative hub for Mazzucchelli’s research, study and design and colour development.
First, can you explain your current role at Mazzucchelli and how long you have been working there? What does it mean to you to be part of such a historic family business? I am responsible for product development, one of the beating hearts of the company. I work with a super professional and passionate team, made up of people with different interests and passions, but all united by an innate sensitivity for the product. I have been working for the company for 13 years.
Mazzucchelli1849 is a family business that next year celebrates an important anniversary: 175 years. I can say that it is a great pride to belong to the sixth generation of the family who works in the company. On the one hand I feel very lucky to be part of such an important reality, able to create beauty with values, on the other I know I have a great responsibility towards the people who work in this large family.
What are the most creative elements of your job and what do you enjoy the most about it? In my role, I have the fortune to range from the creativity necessary for the creation of a new product, the ability of laboratories to create prototypes, from the most artisanal to the most technologically advanced, up to the production of what I like to call mass-produced uniqueness.
I think creativity is a very special value with which we are lucky enough to be born, it must be cultivated and everyone has to do it according to their own inspirations.
One of the fundamental moments for the birth of a new product is the idea: that feeling that does not leave you until it is realized. It must not remain something abstract, it must be shared and if, after discussing this idea with your colleagues, with the laboratories, it still conveys the same strength to you, it means that it must be created. And seeing the first sample made from this idea is one of my favourite moments.
Changes are underway in the optical business with the switch to more sustainable materials. Can you summarise how Mazzucchelli is committed to this switch? It is now quite a long time that Mazzucchelli is committed to sustainable materials, since well before the market and the customers asked for such a change. M49 is our sustainable material on the market now since 2010. During the years, we have continued to improve the performance of M49 material and to promote its usage among the customers, even if at that time the approach to bio, natural and sustainable materials was definitely much less sensitive than what it is today. Mazzucchelli is committed to improving sustainability of the materials through continuous improvements of its iconic M49 as well as the general improvement of its processes, with the increased usage of sustainable energy and improvement of the efficiency of the production processes.
What is your view of the opportunities offered by – for example – M49 – a bio-based and biodegradable material produced by Mazzucchelli? M49 is the only material capable of fully responding to the demand of a more sustainable material. It is a natural material, coming from wood and the plasticiser used is from natural origins, while the “normal” acetate has a plasticiser with fossil origin. Besides, acetate is a recyclable material and, within some technical limitation, can be re-used in some production processes, thus improving its sustainable footprint.
What other sustainable developments can you tell us about? We think in the coming future there will be a much wider usage of natural and sustainable materials, replacing the other materials. This is a no-return decision of the market. Therefore all the efforts will be to sustain this market change by enlarging our offer of M49 together with other solutions aimed at improving the global sustainability not only of our materials and processes but also of the entire supply chain. The usage of acetate Renew helps to improve the sustainability through the Chemical Recycling Technology developed by our supplier Eastman. In this way it is possible to recycle the cellulose acetate waste without affecting the final quality of the Renew material.
Regarding 2023, what are the highlights in terms of trends and colours for eyewear? What for you really stands out for Autumn/Winter, and do you think there is one particular trend that we will see continuing into next year? I think this Autumn/Winter will give us the desire to seek out timeless pieces, which move further and further away from what does not coincide with our commitment to sustainability, which have stories to tell and preserve. We do not have to think of a basic and hyper-classic product, but of a contextualised product that looks towards the future. A combination of material and colour, tones that manage to lighten and give a boost of energy to any pattern. I believe this is not a fleeting desire, it is, in any case, the result of the stimuli we receive from nature on the one hand and from digital technology on the other. The basic colours are sophisticated and transversal, we can think of a rich palette of browns, rusts and greys, combined with brighter tones, contaminated by digital and at the same time empathic.
What are your passions beyond eyewear and eyewear creativity? My passions affect my work and my work affects my passions. I understood that the love for this job is something that is part of my DNA, my roots. And it was a discovery that I gained over the years, because my education goes beyond this world, I trained as a lawyer. Since I joined the company, and got to know the reality of product development, I can say that it was love at first sight.
Just as I love travelling, getting to know new places and different cultures. My father is Italian and my mother is Dutch, so I experience different influences myself and I like to look for beauty in the things around me especially in those I don’t know.
I love to fill my eyes with beauty: whether it’s a painting that attracts the eye, a walk in nature with my children, a city by the sea, a good local dish or people who spend happy time together. I never get tired of looking around. And I have a thing for colour, in everything I do. Professional deformation….