Through the Lens: Claire Goldsmith

Iconic specs and a very special Jaguar are on the agenda when VS talked to the woman who revived Britain's original sunglasses brand.

As told to Estella Shardlow on Tuesday 3rd January, 2012

My great-grandfather started the company in 1926. At the time, glasses were all made of metal and very dull so he looked for something more expressive and he heard about a revolutionary material: plastic. The factory next door to his workshop in Soho was making buttons out of this plastic, so he went and swapped some old spectacle frames for three sheets of plastic, took them back to his workshop and a month later he emerged with the first ever colourful plastic spectacle collection. They’re in the V&A museum today.

There was no such thing as sunglasses when my grandfather took over the company in the mid-30s. Instead, people would take old spectacles to the jewellers and have pink glass or blue glass put in. They called them ‘sunspecs’. My grandfather thought that if he designed something that started life as a sunspec then that might be popular. He designed bigger, more flamboyant frames and put in dark lenses at the point of sale so the customer didn’t need to change anything. He placed them in Fortnum & Mason and Simpsons of Piccadilly and a week later both had completely sold out.

It was celebrity that really rocketed the iconic look of sunglasses. My grandfather would hang around film sets and befriended the stylists and costume designers. I think it really took off with Givenchy as he did all Audrey Hepburn’s costumes. He showed my grandfather and my uncle (who was heading up design at that point) outfits she’d be wearing in a movie and asked them to make eyewear to go with them. She wears OGs in Two for the Road, Roman Holiday, How To Steal A Million and Charade. Today that’s product placement, but back then it was just them using their common sense. If a film was made in England, then you can bet that we supplied the sunglasses – Peter Sellers literally only wore OG sunglasses, and John Lennon’s round specs were originally done by us.

In the early 70s, licencing had really taken off and labels like Prada and Gucci started producing sunglasses, which was a way for people to own designer brands at an accessory level. Rather than a quirky little independent British brand, people wanted to buy into that. That's why OG sunglasses ceased production in the mid-80s.

I was at university studying marketing and looking at how the brands of the future would be those with heritage and authenticity. Suddenly I’m thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, my family have a brand with all of those things, and it’s not around anymore’. So I started asking my uncle about the company. Twenty years on, I knew that big name brands were not what people wanted any more and I thought it was time to re-launch.

To research the brand, I sat in the British Library for a couple of days going through old copies of Vogue going back to the 30s and found a sketch of a pair of glasses in one credited to Oliver Goldsmith. Then there was an article from the 60s that said: “Vidal Sassoon means hair, Quant means clothing, Goldsmith means glasses”. That for me really put into context what OG is and I knew that it was a brand worth re-launching. The whole history was there; it just needed stitching together and telling.

I don’t change anything about the glasses in the OG Collection, even if I think something could be improved, because the whole thing about OG is authenticity. There are certainly things that we do better today – like lenses – but, stylistically, those glasses are exactly the same as they ever were, including the old rivet hinges. I want you be able to compare a vintage pair with a pair today and find that design-wise there is no difference.

The Claire Goldsmith label is my playground to be able to do my own designs. While I am a Goldsmith, I have also got my own direction I want to go in. The reason I put it under my own name is that I didn’t want to confuse people – so OG is a retrospective vintage collection and CG is the new generation; the two can run side by side.

I definitely try to stick to classic designs that will stand the test of time, rather than doing something faddy and high fashion. It has to be the highest quality. I think you’d feel quite cheated otherwise as our glasses are not cheap. I use the best hinges, the best lenses and the freshest plastics. The value with OG glasses is in the frame, whereas the value in those from big name brands is in all the marketing they’re doing.

I never do external branding. You know how you can look at the grille on the front of a car and know what type of car it is, actually that’s incredibly clever, it’s branding through design. I wanted to sides of my frames to do the same thing. Each pair has a contoured temple shape that runs through the entire CG Legacy collection and makes them instantly recognisable.

The new story that a lot of people are enjoying is our children’s line. We took some of our best-selling adult frames and shrunk them right down. There were no decent frames on the market – they’ve all got Hello Kitty or Sponge Bob on them – but these are sophisticated, brightly coloured, miniature versions of OG frames.

My father owned a Jaguar Mark X that he bought for himself with his first pay cheque when he joined OG. That was a great car. He kept it from when he was about 20 all the way up to his 50s. He never drove it anywhere. He would bring it out of the garage every Saturday, park in in the driveway, wash it and wax it and then put in back in the garage again. I loved the smell of it, like old vintage leather – so much so that I just bought myself a 20-year-old Range Rover just because it smelt like my Dad’s Jag inside and I felt transported back! The back of the car was mahogany wood and there were picnic tables that you could pull out of the seats.

I remember the day he sold it, watching it drive away was so sad. Times got tough after the business closed, but I think he sold it just to pay a really nothing bill of some sort. It wasn’t nearly justifiably enough to get rid of something he loved. About five years ago, my mum got a letter from a German family who’d tracked the owners back in the logbook and sent a picture. There was my Dad’s Jag in Germany, surrounded by about ten kids – they looked like the Von Trapps!

QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS

Favourite city? London, every time. It’s my home.

Favourite watch? I’m not a big watch person but my husband is and I’d love to get him a Patek Philippe. I particularly like their advertising slogan: “You don’t own it you merely look after if for the next generation”. I love that idea, we live in a very disposable society, nothing is to keep anymore. It’s the same with OG glasses really. They're things you can pass down.

Style icons? It’s really unoriginal, but it has to be Audrey Hepburn. She just crosses all the borders. I love the style of those supermodels of the 60s and 70s, too – people like Britt Eckland and Jean Shrimpton. The pages of Vogues from the late 50s and early 60s are just amazing.

Favourite classic car? It would have to be an Aston Martin – one from the 60s, although I wouldn’t be overtly fussy about which type. The old Porsches are really something else, but being very British at heart I'd have to have an Aston every time.

Discover more at www.olivergoldsmith.com and www.clairegoldsmith.com