An Eclectically Curated Eyewear Wardrobe

Eyewear is the first thing people notice on you. Typically, you don’t wear the same shirt every day, so why wear the same frame? At Eclectic Eye, helping you build a functional and fun eyewear wardrobe is our specialty. Many of our customers have been carefully curating their own eyewear wardrobe for years.

My eyewear wardrobe is a compilation of the accessories that I enjoy the most. I love necklaces and bracelets too, but it’s eyewear that allows me to fully showcase my personality. I’ve always been a fan of art, artists and art history. To me, eyewear is simply art for your face. The craftsmanship and creativity that goes into designing and producing the beautiful frames we carry at Eclectic Eye offers you a unique piece of art to wear daily.

I love wearing and seeing the details in the handmade, intricate designs that David from SPEXWAX uses. He personally shapes discarded 60s vinyl records into subtle, sophisticated frames, using the back of a skateboard as a template. Who would have ever thought? An artist, that’s who. An added bonus is that I am helping support his small business and artistic process.

I get inspired by the softly restored, velvety zyl and opalescent accents in my beautiful RetroSpecs vintage cat-eye frames. They were worn on someone else 50 years ago. Imagining the story of this frame connects me to people before me in a soulful way. I can envision the RetroSpecs team in Los Angeles, quietly polishing my frame and adjusting it back into its original form. The creative story of RetroSpecs’ beginning isn’t that different than our own small business idea at Eclectic Eye.

France still has a large number of Ateliers (professional artist studios and design houses), and they treat these artisan workshops with utmost regard. Often, it seems we are missing this in the U.S. The ability to be a master artisan and have apprentices is still a very recognizable and viable living in several European countries. It truly shows in some of their incredible eyewear design houses. Francis Klein, Traction and Anne et Valentin represent some of the most creative and beautiful eyewear on the planet, all of which we carry at Eclectic Eye and are essential pieces to my personal collection.

Some of my wardrobe is more functional than fun. I have eyewear that is strictly used when I play tennis and frames that I wear when biking longer distances. I also have some eyewear pieces that I feel particularly dressy in and others that feel more understated. I even have a few that I feel are power frames, or some that tend to fade into the background. So, an eyewear wardrobe doesn’t have to be all about artistic accessorizing; it can also be about specific lifestyle function.

I have people ask me all the time, “How do you store and care for all of these frames?” That’s where my Oyoboxes come in handy. I have five of them in my closet. They protect and display my collection of frames so I can easily see what’s what. I sort mine by color families. Plus, this gives the frames the honest showcasing they deserve! Art pieces in a shadow box.