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As you know, a treasure hunt is not an easy endeavour. Success is even more unlikely when you’re not actually on the lookout. But this is just what happened to Simon Jablon, son of Linda Farrow, who accidentally stumbled upon his mother’s life’s work.
Linda Farrow is a designer who founded her brand by the same name back in 1970. Ever since she has been regarded a fashion pioneer, thanks to the early launch of her brand, and even more so since she was the first designer to realise that sunglasses could be so much more than mere sun protection: she saw them as a fashion item. While on top of the latest trends she has always been unstoppable in her eagerness to experiment.
However, due to family commitments she decided to resign, and over the decades her work began to gather dust. But then, during renovation works in a London warehouse owned by the family, her son found the long forgotten inventory of Linda Farrow sunglasses. With the right instinct for timeless fashion he recognised the high potential of the Linda Farrow glasses and sunglasses and in 2003, with his girlfriend at the time, he revived the brand, now going by the name of Linda Farrow Vintage.
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Back to Linda Farrow
Vintage was hugely popular at the time (and still is), and the thousands of (sun)glasses were in very good shape, so the brand was celebrating a successful comeback. With the motto “Back to the roots” Linda Farrow Vintage developed its empire of today, building on the brand’s core and successfully expanding its product lines. However, the competition never sleeps and had also joined the vintage movement, so Simon needed to think of something new. He began to cooperate with several well-known personalities on the fashion scene.
First of all he returned to the original name Linda Farrow, so that the brand would be recognised as offering much more than just the classic vintage styles. He then brought in renowned fashion designers such as Dries van Noten, Philip Lim, Jeremy Scott, and Alexander Wang for joint fashion projects. And the design process is just one of the ways in which celebrities get involved. Nowadays, several well-known faces of high society have taken on the role of brand ambassador: Yoko Ono, Beyoncé, Amal Clooney, and Rihanna, among others. Only recently at the Met Gala in New York, no one less but Lady Gaga was seen wearing Linda Farrow Oversize sunglasses, which with their gemstone ornaments were impossible to overlook. (Well, the telephone booth on her ear certainly caught some attention as well.)
These sunglasses are a style mix of Cat Eye and Jackie O, which perfectly reflects the history of Linda Farrow Vintage. Ever since the seventies, the designer has contributed to the creation of great trends in sunglasses. And certainly she always knew that, especially in the world of fashion, the styles of today could fade away tomorrow. In the same vein, nowadays great attention is being paid to the historical touch of the current models, but the main focus is on an innovative evolution of the former treasures. This is how, for example, the brand developed the style Future Vintage in cooperation with Jeremy Scott, who designed a colourful pop-inspired collection leaning towards the fifties.
The Linda Farrow Machine Gun Sunglasses will only be fancied by members of the National Rifle Association, presumably, so they ever so slightly overshoot their mark. But then, this is one of the reasons why the company is so popular with its enthusiastic designers. The fashion designer Erdem Moralioğlu was not the only one who pointed out how much he enjoyed his artistic freedom when working for Linda Farrow. He created retro futuristic sunglasses inspired by the science fiction movies of the fifties.
Whichever fashion designer it is that lives out their fantasies in the Linda Farrow studios and workshops – you will almost certainly find a suitable model that you can “arm” yourself with.
