Are Jacques Marie Mage sun shades any good? – Everlasting Model

The brief reply to this query is sure; however a greater reply considers worth via design work and shortage moderately than simply high quality, and whether or not you truly wish to put on barely flashier sun shades. 

Let’s begin with high quality. With eyewear, high quality comes all the way down to a handful of issues: acetate, hinges, the way in which the hinges are hooked up, easy ending and lenses. 

Most individuals use the identical acetate suppliers (Mazzuccheli, Takiron), similar hinges (OBE) and run the pins throughout the arms (to allow them to be repaired and changed). A few of these, just like the hinges, are straightforward particulars to be careful for. Ending and in-store becoming are extra refined. 

However quite a lot of the time, low cost sun shades simply really feel low cost – largely using inexpensive acetates, which make them appear flimsy and brittle. A pair of glasses from a high-street model can really feel as if it is simply ready to be snapped in half.

This is among the barely deceptive issues about Jacques Marie Mage (JMM) glasses. As a result of they use noticeably thicker frames, individuals speak about how substantial and effectively made they really feel. But it surely’s simply extra acetate. 

Nonetheless, JMM ticks all of these high quality factors, and provides area of interest ones like creating its personal hinges. These are very well-made glasses, not like designer manufacturers you may choose up in your native optician, a lot of that are famously made by one firm, Luxottica. 

Nonetheless, the JMM glasses I’ve been sporting the previous few months – the Zephirin in Tokyo color, pictured above – had been £830. What can justify that worth?

Nicely, partly a couple of stuff you don’t wish to pay for. Once we visited the JMM retailer in Hollywood within the spring, most of it was taken up by an enormous distressed-metal horse leaping over half of a equally distressed-metal automobile. There was a velvet rope and a ready space. 

The glasses themselves additionally include quite a lot of packaging – all lovely, and extra tasteful than the horse, however it’s the type of factor you retain on prime of a shelf for some time, simply since you really feel you paid for it. 

A part of the value does account for some issues that elevate JMM glasses and make them genuinely particular, nonetheless.

The best way you normally earn money in sun shades is to make one or two widespread types after which mass produce them for years. The worst approach to do it’s to make heaps and plenty of designs, all attention-grabbing in numerous methods, and make a lot of them in restricted editions. 

That is the JMM enterprise mannequin. And whilst you could say it’s simply one other money-making technique – as a result of it creates hype which means everybody desires the restricted pairs and can overpay for them – it’s undoubtedly the more durable approach to do it. The glasses must be genuinely fascinating.

The frames themselves additionally embrace a number of particulars that make them sophisticated, uncommon and time-consuming to make. Maybe unnecessarily so. 

On mine, for instance, the arms are manufactured from two layers of acetate – a tortoiseshell one and a transparent one – that makes the arms a subtly brighter, extra translucent color than the fronts. It additionally allows them to have a transparent part that wraps across the ears, however makes the arm look extra like a straight line. 

There are a number of of those particulars, all small and maybe, as I stated, pointless. However you possibly can’t argue they’re not placing the work into the product. 

Design-wise, the frames are additionally constantly attention-grabbing. I spoke to a few pals and classic collectors in eyewear, and so they all had reservations in regards to the model, but in addition all praised the sophistication of the designs. 

As one among them put it: “It’s not straightforward to create so many designs that relate to basic items, but in addition all have actual character of their very own.” 

The issue with the designs is, for me, that they’re typically fairly daring and for that motive don’t go well with many individuals. The frames are thick, typically outsized, and generally include eye-catching particulars on the arms. 

Once I visited the London retailer (which I ought to say, is nicer than LA and has some very educated employees) there have been solely two frames that basically labored for me, and this Zephirin was simply the perfect.