Our series on British frame design continues with Richard Mewha, the New York-based designer behind Bevel
eyewear. Clara Browning takes up the story
Mewha: 'We want to make people look cool, good, and beautiful'
Richard Mewha feels that the sale of spectacles should be a more personal experience, saying: 'It gives people a makeover but without the operation. When you fit somebody with a pair of glasses that look good, it really does improve their lives.'
Mewha is critical of what he says is the impersonal service that can be found in some UK optical chain stores: 'Although there might be some desire from the top of the company, it requires the sales people from the stores to get behind the concept.'
Mewha, originally from Devon, sees himself as more of a stylist than a designer. 'Selling eyewear is styling people. When I go for a haircut I don't say to the hairdresser "I want to look like Brad Pitt", because it's not going to happen, I want them to tell me what would look good on me.'
Mewha was directly confronted with this problem when he came over to England while working for Alain Mikli. Mikli's products were of a more eclectic nature than most frames on the UK market at that time. 'England was just completely clueless about how to sell these glasses,' says Mewha. 'They just wanted to sell whatever brand they were selling at the time.'
DESIGN-LED
By the age of 24 Mewha was living in Brooklyn and managing sales throughout North America for Alain Mikli. However, he had never specifically planned to follow a career in optics.
The Bevel collection from Incite |
Alain Mikli had a subsidiary in Italy and the young Mewha was highly intrigued by the fashionable element attached to spectacle production. He confesses that he was 'not particularly fashionable at that time', but he also acknowledges the fact that, 'you don't have to be fashionable to like interesting eyewear'.
After three years working in the US, where he lived and worked alongside Nadine Roth, one of the co-founders of Face ˆ Face, Mewha decided it was time to move on. For the next 10 years he worked as a rep for Matsuda.
It was here he became more involved in consultations with Japanese designers, which was when he started to realise where his design interests lay.
'I had come from Mikli which was super funky, and then got to Matsuda which was conservative, although interesting in many ways. Mikli was design-driven, but Matsuda was quality-driven. In a sense, that's where I come from - a bit of both of those camps.'
Of his current company, Incite, of which Bevel is its brand, Mewha says:'We're looking to push the envelope a little bit as far as design is concerned. We want to make people look cool, good, and beautiful.'
Mewha is not only interested in style, he is also fond of the technological side of his business, a fascination that developed during his time in the industry. However, he recognises that not everyone appreciates the workmanship that goes into a pair of frames. 'If someone on the street looked at it they may not understand it, but an engineer would look at it and go, "That's amazing!"' he comments.
With Bevel, Mewha and his colleague Rick Nelson offer milled titanium frames, which, cut from sheets of titanium, offer a rough surface that holds colour well. They also produce beta titanium frames, which create a bold, acetate look but with the comfort of a titanium frame.
FUTURE DECISIONS
As far as other brands go, Mewha and Nelson intend to keep working under the umbrella of Bevel for now, adapting their philosophy to different projects and hopefully appealing to different audiences. They are currently working towards another concept, using stainless steel and trying to create a more metallic look; this they hope will help with their appeal to younger tastes. The main market for Bevel for now is in the US and Canada, but recently the company has been venturing further afield to Switzerland, Japan and France.
'People in America love to buy stuff. They go out more, spend money on their credit card, even though they don't have money in the bank. They'll buy a fridge, the latest iPod, a pair of glasses, whereas in England we take our time.'
Mewha's grounding in optics has given him strong opinions about the trends sported on the streets of Britain today. As Mewha points out: 'People in England are wearing very funky clothes, but there's no real presence of cool eyewear.
'What makes our business interesting is we can style people to make them look great, and that's a positive thing.'
He urges people not to be a 'clone', and simply opt for rimless frames. 'If I'm going to have to wear glasses, then I want to look cool wearing them.'