Moscot

Unlike some of the online frame retailers appearing in pop-up locations around New York over the past year, Moscot has a story to tell. The New York group was established in 1915 and in that time has turned into a global fashion brand. However, it is quick to point out that it remains a ‘neighbourhood optical shop at heart’.

Harvey Moscot’s great grandfather Hyman arrived in New York from Eastern Europe in 1899 and began his career in optics by selling ready-made glasses from a pushcart in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. ‘In those days people would line up on Orchard and sell their wares. They would come along and try a frame and if they liked them they would buy them – there were no technical procedures to prescribe glasses,’ says Moscot.