Nirvana, for sunglasses fanatics, is to be found in a converted schoolhouse in the Clerkenwell area of London. That’s where the Linda Farrow archives are housed—a few filing cabinets’ worth of specs dating from the origins of the Linda Farrow brand in the late 1960′s. Aviators of all shapes and sizes and superbly wacky ’80′s frames in iridescent metal and candy-colored plastic number among the styles that Simon Jablon found in his mother’s warehouse several years ago. The trove inspired him to launch the Linda Farrow Vintage brand in 2003. Initially, Jablon and partner Tracy Sedino were selling off the archive; these days, they’re working to augment it. The brand is already a profligate collaborator, working with Raf Simons, Luella Bartley, Veronique Branquinho, and Jeremy Scott, to name a few, and with the launch of the new Projects range this summer, Linda Farrow Vintage will
be bringing yet more designers into its fold. “We’ve always loved working with young, creative designers,” explains Jablon, “because every time we do, we learn something. They’re constantly bringing us ideas that seem impossible to execute.” Projects comprise styles from designers such as Giles, Tim Hamilton, Antonio Berardi, Charles Anastase, and Preen. As Jablon notes, additional designers may be added to the Projects roster in seasons to come. And in the meantime, he and Sedino have combined the very new and the very, very, very, very old in the latest Linda Farrow Vintage frame—the Mammoth. This limited-edition addition to the archive features—seriously—woolly mammoth tusk. “We’re only doing 100 pieces,” says Jablon. “The melting of the polar ice caps has exposed quite a lot of mammoth tusk, enough that a bit of it has found its way to market, but the bottom line,” he adds, “is that you can only produce so many sunglasses that are over a million years old.”