Robert La Roche

Robert La Roche turned Vienna’s 1970s art scene into a springboard for eyewear, quickly attracting a following that included Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He retired the brand in 1999, and it stayed dormant until a small, independent team relaunched it in 2014, determined to honour his archive rather than reinvent it.

Frames are still handmade in specialist workshops in Italy and Japan, made in short runs of around 100 pieces rather than mass production. Its advertising campaigns are considered art in their own right — the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts gave the brand its own retrospective exhibition in 2016.

Part of the wider world of independent eyewear — not necessarily something we carry, but always something we’re happy to talk about.