The future’s bright
In Britain, sunshine in summertime is not guaranteed. So why are we so obsessed with sunglasses? From the surrounds of her shop near Portobello Market, Claire Goldsmith reflects briefly and then announces, “I would say it’s just a longing, just wishful thinking. The Brits can be so pessimistic. But when it comes to the weather we are eternal optimists!”
Claire’s own optimism doesn’t stop at the weather, however. Great-granddaughter of Oliver Goldsmith, the man credited with introducing the “sun-spec” to the nation, she resuscitated the family business with the kind of no-holds-barred enthusiasm that might have seemed foolhardy had it not led to almost instant success. “As a kid I jumped into a swimming pool and only once I was in I realised I don’t really know how to swim. I think I’ve taken that attitude throughout my life; this is a swimming pool I jumped into,” she grins.
It all started with a shop set up by Oliver Goldsmith in 1926 to make frames for spectacles. “Eyewear had been a medical necessity – you wore metal-rimmed spectacles because you couldn’t see, and that was it,” Claire says. “He had started a company with the vision that eyewear could be more interesting. It was so prominent, everyone looked at it – why didn’t people take a bit more time and care?”
When the senior Mr Goldsmith passed away, his son – Claire’s grandfather – took over the shop in Poland Street at the age of 16. What he lacked in years he made up for in foresight. “There was a guy next door who made buttons for clothing,” reveals Claire, “and he had a revolutionary material called plastic. My grandfather went next door, traded some old spectacle frames for a couple of sheets of plastic, went back to the workshop and emerged with the first-ever colourful spectacle collection.”
The innovations didn’t end there though – a further idea led Britons one step closer to our fixation on summer eyewear. “People used to put tinted glass into old spectacle frames to make sunglasses,” Clare explains, but the young Mr Goldsmith had the bright idea to design “bigger, more flamboyant” frames specifically intended to serve as sunglasses – or sun-specs as they were then called. “He did a collection and put them in Fortnum & Mason. A week later they were on the phone saying, ‘We’ve sold out, we need more, we’re in business.’ It was the beginning of sunglasses in Britain.”
Oliver Goldsmith frames debuted in Vogue in the 1930s, and over the decades to come they were never out of fashion. This was the first eyewear brand to promote sunglasses as an accessory rather than a necessity, the first to feature on the covers of Vogue and Queen, the first to collaborate with fashion houses on the catwalk and the first to be endorsed by celebrities and royalty alike.
Claire takes me on a little tour of the archives. The first entry on the first page of the Poland Street visitors’ book is Peter Sellers and notes from everyone from Britt Eckland to Nancy Sinatra to Nina Simone appear on the pages that follow. Back in the day, Grace Kelly, Michael Caine, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren all sported the Goldsmith style. By the 1970s, the brand even had the endorsement of the V&A, who maintained that Oliver Goldsmith was to eyewear design what Vidal Sassoon was to hair and Mary Quant to clothes.
By the 1980s Claire’s grandfather was ready for retirement. Her father and uncle took over but eventually decided to go their separate ways – and so the sunny Oliver Goldsmith empire was put on ice.
It might have stayed there had Claire not come along 20 years later and begged for the keys to the sun-spec kingdom. “I remember at uni saving up for a pair of Gucci glasses that were £160 – which was a lot of money on a student loan! I finally got them and a couple of weeks later the arm fell off. I went back to Sunglass Hut and told them the arm fell off! The guy looked at me gormlessly and couldn’t offer any solution. I thought there’s an opportunity to bring back Oliver Goldsmith, providing I back it up with the quality and craftsmanship it was always known for.’”
She trawled the massive back catalogue of frames, each one carefully stored in chronological order in her uncle’s attic, and mobilised the little factory of “five craftsmen, all of them pushing 60” who had made Oliver Goldsmith frames for previous generations. “Quite quickly news got out that Oliver Goldsmith was back. Harvey Nichols who used to be with us said, ‘We’d love to see you.’” A big order immediately followed, and icons including Kylie Minogue, Jude Law, Robbie Williams and Gwyneth Paltrow picked up where Audrey and Grace had left off.
In addition to continually reissuing archival styles of sunglasses, Claire is launching a collection of optical frames this summer and she’s also just opened a studio in Shepherd’s Bush, kitted out with experts and machines to create handmade frames just like in the Poland Street days. “I’m pleased to say we have managed to source, repair and polish up all the bits that we needed, and we now have a fully functioning workshop that can make a frame exactly the traditional way it was always made. Now the aim is to get some people interested in apprenticeships.”
Claire divides her time between the All Saints Road shop, Shepherd’s Bush studio and the home she shares with her husband Matt and their new baby Sam. He’s not yet a year old, but Claire is indoctrinating him in sunglass style. “I made him a teeny little pair of aviators,” she laughs. Perhaps there’s a chance that sporting Goldsmith frames will continue among future generations of English optimists for summers to come.
Oliver Goldsmith, 15 All Saints Road W11 1HA, 0845 053 3440