Nothing works me up into a FERVORish pitch more these days here at 20/20 than the sizzling topic of Our Eyewear, i.e., specs specific to an eyewear heritage. I’m personally and professionally committed to this niche as it represents a sense of pride in the eyewear arena across a broad range of important issues having to do with both ECP AND vendor commitment toward the quest of better vision and self-assured visual appeal.

Quite obviously, this pride of legacy lends very well to the luxury segment of the opti-arena, but I’d like to take this privileged stance as editor-in-chief making the point Our Eyewear is far from limited to just that segment of the market and, indeed, the OPportunity to strut your inner-eyewear pride is extensive in reach; a point broadly addressed in this issue’s full Our Eyewear photo feature.

So… Here we go…

Our Eyewear is two SoCal brothers in their post-punk daze channeling their inner “geek” attitude and scoring with Geek Eyewear. At opposite ends, it’s a guy named Billy and a gal named Patti teaming up with a supreme focus on luxury and taking pride in their OWN surnames of Barton (and) Perreira.

It’s L’Amy digging deep into fulfilling the “vision” of a founder family and coming up with the global (fit) vision of…Vision’s. It’s a mighty giant sensitively honoring the history and heady dreams of an acquired eyewear brand factory and letting Persol continue to flourish in the craftsmanship and kinetic eyepiece trademarks of its sunwear and eyewear.

It’s a man named Christian endlessly renewing his “optical” (love) “affair” and celebrating 30 devoted years of that missive anew on the cover of 20/20, itself now 40 years new.

It’s Thomas Lafont continuing in the footsteps of his talented mother while taking bold new steps with her pioneering strides in artistic color and genius craft. It’s Ogi, increasingly effervescent and innovative in a vital Our Eyewear leadership role. It’s Europa International being fiercely independent in its devotion to dispensing independents across America. It’s Sandy being Sandy with color at Colors in Optics. It’s the PRO and DESIGN in ProDesign and the MY in Mykita.

And that’s just the tip of the OURberg. There’s so much more to this devoted heritage society of specs. And this worthy position holds many solutions and advantages as you navigate YOUR position in OUR chosen profession of optical in both origin and onward.

—James J. Spina
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]