Oliver Peoples Frames Are Now on Our Boards in New Albany

It started with a box of old frames

In 1986, three opticians bought an estate collection of American-made frames that had been sitting in a Connecticut warehouse since the middle of the century. Those vintage shapes became the stock of the West Hollywood shop they opened the following year, and the starting point for the frames they began designing themselves.

The name came off a receipt inside the collection, and it has been the name over the door ever since.

Where the frames are actually made

Oliver Peoples makes its frames in Japan and Italy, the two countries at the center of fine eyewear manufacturing for the last hundred years. Which country a given model comes from varies by model, and the frame itself will tell you.

The Japanese production runs through Fukui, a region that has been making eyewear since the 1900s. Frames there are precision milled and then hand polished, and the polishing is the step that gives acetate its depth. It is slow work, and it is most of what you are holding when a frame feels different in your hand.

The detail is where you find it up close

The house style is quiet. The front of the frame stays clean, and the detail lives where you find it up close: custom acetate colors, hand-applied finishes, perforated eyewire on some models, filigree worked into the temple cores on others.

The effect is that the frames read as expensive to people who know eyewear, and read as well-chosen to everyone else. Recognition comes from the shape and the finish rather than a mark you can see across a room.

The models with names of their own

Two are worth knowing before you come in.

The Gregory Peck is the round one, built with the Peck estate and modeled on the frames the actor wore as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His name is inscribed on the temple. It has been the brand’s signature frame for years. Round shapes sit differently on different faces, so it is one to actually put on rather than judge from a photo.

The O’Malley is the everyday one, a softened shape that works for the office and does not announce itself.

You may also have seen the Finley, the Riley and the Cary Grant. Our selection rotates through the year, so call ahead if you are coming in for a specific model and we will tell you what is on the board and what we can bring in for you.

Putting your prescription in them

Oliver Peoples frames take prescription lenses, and we handle them the way we handle everything else on our boards. Most of the work happens in our in-house lens lab, where we cut and edge the majority of what we sell. Whether a particular frame will carry a progressive depends on how deep the lens opening is and what your prescription asks for, and that is a quick check our optical team does while you have the frame on.

Semi-rimless styles get grooved here as well.

Selected Oliver Peoples sunglasses carry polarized or photochromic glass lenses. We can also build prescription sunglass lenses into a frame you pick out. If you are choosing sunwear, the American Academy of Ophthalmology has a straightforward guide to UV protection that is worth two minutes before you decide on a lens.

A few millimeters decide it

The difference between a frame that works and one that almost works is usually a few millimeters of bridge width or temple length, which is what a fitting sorts out. If you want to know what those measurements mean before you come in, our frame anatomy guide walks through every part of a frame and what it does.

When you get here, our optical team will narrow the boards to the frames that suit your prescription and your face, which is a shorter list than the whole wall and a much better one.

Frequently asked questions