S: Silmo
France’s annual eyewear exhibition hosted 1,000 exhibitors from 42 countries and 37,000 visitors across 80,000m2 of hall space in 2019. When the inaugural Silmo Mondial de l’Optique was held in 1967, it hosted 58 exhibitors in the city of Oyonnax, near Jura, the country’s epicentre of frame manufacturing. As Silmo grew, it was hosted in Oyonnax and Paris on alternate years before making its permanent home in Paris in 1981, every autumn at the Porte de Versailles.
Its awards were launched in 1994 to recognise the excellence, creativity and innovation of the optical industry. Silmo has grown internationally and has hosted offshoot events in Istanbul, Bangkok and Sydney. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017 but in 2020, the usual event at Paris Nord Villepinte, its home since 2010, was cancelled because of Covid-19. However, the show must go on and organisers adapted by taking it on the road in October, visiting various French cities and exhibiting the latest innovations the industry has to offer.
T: Titanium
A material that is used in aerospace engineering because of its light weight and high strength, titanium has also been adopted by eyewear companies for the same reasons. When used in frames, titanium’s low density provides the wearer with a comfortable feel that can be easily adjusted for a good fit. In its purest form, it is hypo-allergenic and non-corrosive, making it an ideal eyewear material for spectacle-wearers looking for a pair of irritant-free frames. A durable metal, titanium provides long-term use and is named after the Titans, the offspring of Gaia, the Earth goddess of Greek mythology.
Eyewear companies market titanium frames as a product steeped in the history of craftsmanship, providing the wearer with a premium style. Blackfin’s beta-titanium frames are cut from a sheet five-tenths of a millimetre thick by Japanese craftsman. It states that the titanium used is the purest, a product resulting from centuries of work the people of Japan have devoted to perfecting the raw material. Charmant’s headquarters in Sabae, Japan is where they manufacture 25 tonnes of nickel-free titanium a year, with its own manufacturing machines and alloys. In 1987, Charmant says it became the first eyewear company to introduce an entire titanium collection. Lindberg founder Poul-Jørn Lindberg and architect Hans Dissing claim their Air frame was the world’s first rimless, titanium wire glasses. Although the lustrous metal is naturally silver and grey in colour, Lindberg provides 35 colour options, weighing as little as 1.9 grams.
U: Udo Proksch
Austrian eyewear designer, businessman and convicted murderer, Udo Proksch started his career aged 23 when he won a competition to design eyewear for Wilhelm Anger’s company Optyl. The pair went on to create the Carerra and Viennaline brands before Proksch established his own brand, Serge Kirchhofer, in 1961, which he described as comparable to Dior and Dalí. The eyewear designer is credited for elevating the status of spectacles from an everyday necessity to a bold fashion statement, while earning himself the title of the enfant terrible of eyewear with a reputation as a playboy.
However, Proksch’s creative vision was soon overshadowed by an attempt at insurance fraud in 1977 that resulted in the death of six people. Using a time bomb, he blew up the Lucona cargo ship in the Indian Ocean and claimed that it was carrying $20m worth of uranium mining equipment. On discovery of the shipwreck and no evidence of the equipment, Proksch fled Austria and evaded the law for over a decade, employing plastic surgery to alter his appearance. He was eventually arrested and given a life sentence in 1991 before dying during heart surgery in the prison’s hospital in 2001.
