LONDON — Within the Royal Arcade off Bond Avenue in Mayfair there’s a tiny jewel field of a retailer that creates bespoke eyewear, giving as a lot consideration to a shopper’s physiognomy as a Savile Row tailor may to an individual’s gait and inside leg measurement.
E.B. Meyrowitz was established in 1875 and its London retailer is run right now by Sheel and Jamie Davison-Lungley, a mother-son duo who put conventional craftsmanship, discretion and customer support on the prime of their checklist of firm values.
In keeping with analysis agency Statista, the worldwide eyewear market is value $120.7 billion and is anticipated to succeed in $153.6 billion by 2025. Big corporations like Luxottica dominate the business with mass-produced frames which might be usually bought underneath luxurious model names. However the Davison-Lungleys, with their custom-designed, handcrafted frames in valuable metals, tortoiseshell, horn, fossilized coral and mammoth ivory, goal to be the antithesis of the mass-market providing, with costs beginning at 595 kilos ($672) for a ready-to-wear pair of frames, together with lenses, whereas bespoke designs are £1,650 for acetate or £3,000 in buffalo horn.
The corporate’s founder, Emil Bruno Meyrowitz, was born in 1852 in what’s now Germany. By the point of his demise in 1937, his obituary described his enterprise as “one of many world’s largest optical corporations,” with branches in the US, Paris and London. He had been a pioneer within the creation of eyeglasses, optical tools and even sports activities goggles for the likes of Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. (An E.B. Meyrowitz steel-reinforced glasses case was credited with serving to to save lots of the lifetime of Theodore Roosevelt when he was shot in 1912 whereas campaigning for a 3rd presidential time period.)
Ms. Davison-Lungley, now the agency’s proprietor and inventive director, was raised in Kampala, Uganda, and credit her progressive early schooling with inspiring her curiosity each within the arts and the sciences. When, as a teen, she and her household moved to London, her lecturers had a extra restrictive method. “They instructed my dad and mom that I favored too many issues and that I wanted to focus,” mentioned Ms. Davison-Lungley, 66. “So I assumed, effectively, no matter I do, artwork might be part of it.”
She graduated as an ophthalmic shelling out optician from Metropolis and East London Faculty in 1978 and was working at Meyrowitz when the British portion of the enterprise got here up on the market in 1993 (the Paris and New York shops are individually owned). She couldn’t resist and her dad and mom agreed to remortgage their home to finance the acquisition. “All people talked about E.B. Meyrowitz once I was finding out, even our lecturers,” she mentioned. “It was so grand and he had created so many wonderful issues for his shoppers.”
She deliberate to revive the enterprise, which by then was promoting ready-made frames, as she values bespoke creations in all corners of her life. As a teen she began designing her personal garments and through an interview wore a coat in an Indian block print silk paisley design over a black silk shift gown, each of her personal design. “I like handmade issues, so how may I bear to point out folks the rest?” she mentioned.
When assembly with a shopper, Ms. Davison-Lungley mentioned, she appears carefully on the face and head. Simply by eye, she takes as many as 23 measurements, together with the bridge of the nostril, the gap between the eyes and the peak of the ears, to make sure an ideal match.
However much more essential than technical measurements, she mentioned, is knowing her shoppers and serving to them to make the appropriate selections. Whereas Meyrowitz glasses could have a particular look, nobody ought to discover you might be sporting them — “they need to turn into such part of your bone construction, part of your face that they make you look nice, however folks aren’t positive why you look nice,” she mentioned.
Re-establishing the bespoke facet of the enterprise was not simple. “It took me about 15 years to truly discover craftsmen to do what I actually beloved,” she mentioned. As we speak, Meyrowitz’s major workshop is in Hampton, outdoors London, and the enterprise employs as many as 15 folks at anyone time to provide its designs.
First, utilizing Ms. Davison-Lungley’s hand-drawn design, the body is lower, utilizing a noticed, out of the uncooked materials. Then the items could also be filed, dyed to the specified colour or could even be fused with one other materials in a {custom} lamination earlier than the ultimate sprucing. They lower and match premium lenses made by the German specialist Zeiss or different impartial lens makers. “I like to provide folks the perfect I can get,” she mentioned.
It takes six to 10 weeks from the preliminary session to supply of a pair of bespoke glasses, and the enterprise produces about 1,000 {custom} orders a 12 months. The shoppers, nonetheless, are by no means named, and Ms. Davison-Lungley mentioned she wouldn’t even inform a husband or spouse that she had seen the accomplice on the identical day until one in every of them talked about it. (She does really feel snug acknowledging that Diana, Princess of Wales, was a buyer and {that a} pair of sun shades made for her within the mid-Nineties was rereleased not too long ago as a part of the ready-to-wear assortment.)
Mr. Davison-Lungley, 33, has lengthy been concerned within the enterprise, from taking a 12 months out of his research to work on the ground to designing its web site. After a brief stint as a banker and acquiring his grasp’s diploma in accounting and finance from the London College of Economics in 2015, he joined the enterprise full time. As we speak, in addition to working carefully together with his mom on the enterprise’s branding, he conducts trunk exhibits each six months.
“We attempt to create a convivial setting on these journeys and see a mixture of common and new shoppers,” he mentioned in a telephone interview throughout a current eight-city go to to the US that included stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Palm Seaside, Fla. Plans to broaden the excursions to Asia and the Center East have been delayed by the pandemic however will begin subsequent 12 months, he mentioned.
In addition to a ardour for eyewear, Mr. Davison-Lungley has additionally inherited his mom’s creativity. Three years in the past, after he had redesigned the shop’s inside with conventional, handcrafted cupboards in British walnut, his mom got here throughout a drawing of a retailer design that he had created when he was 8 years previous.
“It was precisely just like the show cupboards are right now,” he mentioned with amusing.