4 ★ FTWeekend 24 February/25 February 2018

Style

I t was as plainas the una-dorned noseon my face: In e e d e d

glasses. Last sum-mer, slowly at first,almost impercepti-bly, and then rap-

idly and obviously, after 44 years ofexemplary service, my eyes began to letme down. Nothing dramatic, just thatthe small print was increasingly illegi-ble, menus had to be held up to the light,and reading a text on my phone necessi-tatedaseriesofsquintsandgrimaces.AtSpecsavers on Tottenham Court Road,London, an optician confirmed what Ihad guessed: I had astigmatisms in botheyes, and while I could see all too clearlyinto the far distance, up close a blurryhaze was obscuring the picture. (Let usnotlingerhereovermid-lifemetaphors.)

I don’t doubt there are people who, onlearning of a physical setback such asthis, might feel deflated. Like stiffeningknees or bafflement at the popularappeal of Snapchat, fading eyesight issurelyareliable indicatorofapproachingdecrepitude. In my case, given that untilrecently my eyes were pretty much myonly remaining fully functioning bodypart, I confess I did feel a pang of disap-pointment, knowing that they, too, hadpacked up along with everything else.But the sad truth is that instead of beingdejected, I was delighted. Excited.Inspired, even. I couldn’t wait to getstarted. A whole new world of acquisi-tivenessandaffectationawaited.Yippee!

Call it vanity. Call it late capitalist dec-adence. Call it shopaholism. But I wasnow in the market for an entirely newkind of luxury accessory. For a stylesnob, that is its own kind of bliss. Herewas a fresh object of desire that I couldresearch, fuss over, spend money on,and,ultimately, feel superiorabout.

For most men, once we get past ado-lescence,opportunities forsartorialdar-ing are limited. One can splash out on aSwiss watch, of course. One can go forsilly ties, like the Channel 4 News chap-pie. Or shouty socks, like the hunkyCanadianPMwiththelustroushair.

Those truly desperate for attentioncan adopt a more flamboyant affecta-tion — quirky cufflinks, novelty braces,bow ties, earrings, neck tattoos, thosefunny leather bangles that Italian menwear, all the customary signifiers of

needy non-conformism. But, splashywatch apart, none of those options isgreatly to be encouraged. So most of usmust be satisfied with pressing our crispwhite shirts and shining our smart blackshoes and making sure our navy suitsfit. Important stuff, but not likely to setpulses racing. And no way to express abit of personality, or individual attitude.

How to own and wear something thatmakes you look more distinctive, moredashing, without appearing irretrieva-bly gauche, unforgivably infra dig? Oneanswer: specs.

The face all style-conscious Britishmen of a certain age have in mind whenthey go shopping for their first pair ofglasses is Michael Caine’s. More specifi-cally, the Michael Caine of The IpcressFile, from 1965, his first appearance asHarry Palmer, Len Deighton’s anti-es-tablishment spy. Caine’s Palmer wasemblematic of a relatively recent Britisharchetype: the working-class man whorefused to know his place. The kitchen-sink James Bond. And unlike his friendSean Connery’s 007, Caine’s spook woreglasses: dark, thick-rimmed spectaclesthat somehow made him seem morepotent,moremodern,ratherthanless.

Caine wore the glasses off-screen, too.Unlike other movie stars, he made no attempt to hide his weak eyesight.There’s a wonderful photograph byHarry Dempster, from 1964, the year ofhis breakthrough, of the actor taking teawith his mother and his brother. He’sreading the paper and smoking a ciga-rette. He is giving the camera a heavy-

It got a record number of likes. (Arecord for me; nothing to trouble aKardashian.) And almost all the com-ments were complimentary. “SWOON!”wrote a friend. She added a blue heartemoji. “Solid Colin Firth vibes,” wroteanother, referring to the character Firthplays in A Single Man, the forensicallystylish Tom Ford film. “#peteryork”,wrote a rival magazine editor, referringto the noted style guru and man about

town. I was thrilled with all this atten-tion, of course. How could I not be? Butthe best comments were those thatmentionedCaine.

In the flesh, not everyone was so com-plimentary. “Hmm, not bad,” said myfriend Camilla, not a woman known forfence-sitting. “Only 30 per cent EdSheeran.” At home, the reception waseven less kind. “No, I don’t like them,”said my daughter, aged eight and neverwrong about these things. “You don’tlook like you.” She wasn’t keen, and nei-ther was her mother. I thought I lookedlike the thrusting star of a 1960s espio-nage thriller, they thought I looked like aforty-something father of two from westLondon in the midst of a mid-life stylecrisis.(Ithinkweknowwhowascorrect.)

They’re beautiful things, those Cutlerand Gross specs, and I still put them onfrom time to time, and feel temporarilymasterful and defined. But after a cou-ple of weeks of wearing them every day,I set them aside. I hadn’t really beenwearing them, they’d been wearing me.Itwasall justabit toofancy-dress.

I startedagain. I spentsometimemer-rily browsing the new breed of specsshopsthathavebeenpoppingupinLon-don in the past few years, the best ofwhich seems to be Cubitts. But none ofthem felt very me. I tried on Jeff Goldb-lums and Robin Days and Buddy Hollysand Harry Potters and even Dumble-dore half-moons. I didn’t find a pair ofpince-nez but I’d have tried those, too, ifI had. The only designs I didn’t attemptwere those wire-frame, rimless, oblongSilicon Valley chief executive glasses,the type worn by the late Steve Jobs andhis replacement, Tim Cook. Because,really,whybother? Ifyou’rethatdesper-ate to look like a bureaucratic function-ary from Mitteleuropa, why not just goall inandmovetoZurich?

And then I opened the door at E.B.Meyrowitz, in the Royal Arcade in May-fair, and a bell tinkled, and the fogcleared. Itwasa lightbulbmoment.

Emil Bruno Meyrowitz, a Prussianémigré to South Africa, founded his firstoptician’sshopinLondonin1875,subse-quently opening in Paris and New York.Meyrowitz became famous for his dis-tinctive designs. Customers includedWinston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt,GraceKellyandtheDuchessofWindsor.

Charles Lindbergh wore a pair to crossthe Atlantic. The London businesspassed through a number of hands until1993, when it was acquired by itspresent owner, Sheel Davison-Lungley,who designs the glasses and runs thebusiness with her two sisters and herson, Jamie. (The New York and Parisshopsare independent.)

It was Sheel, as I have come to knowher, who greeted me at the door on myfirst visit and guided me through theprocess. (“Guided” is not a strongenough word. Sheel led the process, Ifollowed behind, slightly mesmerised.)She is an extraordinarily empatheticand commanding woman in early mid-dle age, and she tolerated my trying onofmyriadshapesandstylesandcolours,on a number of separate visits, withoutever deviating from the decision shemadeassoonassheclappedeyesonme.

I needed a pair of her New Yorkers, aclassic style, in black acetate, possiblyeven matt black, and I needed to havethem made for me bespoke, so that thebridge could be widened to accommo-date my characterful nose (she didn’tsay “characterful”, that’s my euphe-mism) and the width could be adjustedto suit my longish face, and the depthchanged, too, and the browline altered.Basically, we had to start from scratch,andshehadtobringordertochaos.

On that first visit, Sheel led me up atight spiral staircase to her office, seatedme in an armchair, and sized my face bysight alone. She wrote down some meas-urements for the frame-maker to workfrom, and continued to stare closely atme,workingout thecorrectproportionsof the frame she would commission. Itwas rather like what I imagine sitting foraportraitmightbe.Quite intimate, tobewatched so attentively, but Sheel hasforgiving eyes and she was beginningthe process of making me see better andlookbetter. I felt safe.

Tenweeks later, Iwentbacktopickupthe glasses she made. They are incredi-bly light, comfortable to the point that Iquickly forget I’m wearing them, andquietly stylish. Even my daughterapproves. Inside the right arm, in Sheel’shandwriting, it says “EB MeyrowitzHandmade”. Inside the left arm, also inher handwriting, my name. When I’m not wearing the glasses they sit in aleather pouch stamped with the Mey-rowitz spirit animal, the griffin. I likethem so much I’d keep wearing themeven if, by some miracle, my eyesightweretoimprove.SheelsaystheMeyrow-itz style has elements of nostalgia, butthat there isamodernismtoherdesigns.“They make people’s faces more excit-ing,” she says. “More interesting.” Atleast inmycase, I thinkshe’sright.

Bespoke frames are not cheap —acetate frames start at £1,000; buffalohorn at £2,000 and tortoise-shell at£9,000 (she recently sold a pair of tor-toise-shell glasses for £22,000) — butSheel will happily sell you a pair of off-the-peg New Yorkers for £595 and you’llstill look better than any speccy four-eyeshasanyright to.

I’m going to ask her to make me someprescription sunglasses next, in time forsummer. Maybe buffalo-horn frames,in a different style, something a bitheavier, more daring. I’m thinkingHarryPalmer.

Alex Bilmes is editor-in-chief of Esquire

Personal history | Where does

a man look to find eyewear

inspiration? Michael Caine,

of course, says Alex Bilmes

I t was something of a surprise for39-year-old London-based artistand teacher Celia Pym to be short-listed for the foundational 2017Loewe Craft Prize. Usually her knit-

ted, mended and darned creationsare just for fun. The submitted

piece? An Albemarle “NorwegianSweater” (pictured left) that

she picked up from AnnemorSundbo’s Ragpile collectioninNorway.

Despite its incrediblytatty and moth-eatencondition, Pym made her

beautiful intheremaking.“I like itwhenthings are lumpy and bumpy. It’s nicewhen you can see the landscape of dam-age, which although I am mending, I amalsodistorting.”

Pym’s fascination with repair startedin 2007, when she inherited a jumperbelonging to her great uncle, who wasalso an artist. The jumper was studdedwith holes, fraying thread and mis-matched sewn-on patches. “My great-aunt had already had a go at repairing it,and it was such a beautiful way of visiblyseeing time, you could really feel thetrace of a person.” According to Pym,her process of restoration on the jumperwas “a rather pointless exercise. I wasn’tmending it to be beautiful, but it felt likeIwaspreservingarelationship.”

Now the self-proclaimed “damagedetective” has gone on to do severalexhibitions, most recently at the Victo-ria and Albert Museum’s Maps of Wearand Tear: The Art of Darning. Pymencouraged strangers to bring items ofclothing that they wished to be mended;in exchange she would hear their storiesand repair the garment for free. Next toher was a tracksuit, and for each item ofclothing she mended she would mirrorthe mark on the tracksuit, sewing in theexact same spot using different col-ouredthreads.

“The tracksuit became a mendingmap of holes,” she says, “and it was won-derful. The end-product was a visualisa-tion of my darning but also a memory ofthe exchanges that took place. Peoplewould open up and talk to me abouttheir clothes, their lives and history — itwas intimate and personal.” The exhibi-tion was a huge success, and over 94participantsshoweduptotakepartoverits four-dayduration.

Did anyone bring a luxury item? “OhGod, no!” Pym laughs, “I didn’t receive aDior gown or anything, usually peoplejust bring me jumpers from Cos andGap. You only really want to mend whatyoulive in.”

Things are only getting busier forPym. “I was commissioned by the Nou-veau Musée National de Monaco torepair damaged clothing and costumesthey had in storage from places like LesBalletsdeMonte-Carlo.”

Her favourite item? “I mended thisgold cape, one of the costumes from theballet; it was made from this old goldensilk and sequins, and over time it hadstarted to rot and was terribly dusty.The whole piece was so fragile, I wantedtotackdownwhat littlesilkremained.”

Did she put her eccentric Pym twistonthe item?“Yes,museumsandconser-vationists are all about making as littleimpact as possible so as not to increasedamage. Idon’t thinkthat’smyrole.”

Pym’s practical and nurturing per-sonality is infectious, not to mentiondeeply desirable. “Over time I haverealised that I am mending more thanjust a garment, I’m into other people’sproblems. People come to me and I’mlike, ‘Right, what can we do aboutthis?’ I actually qualified to be a nursein my early thirties, I think it is all to dowith caring.”

But what does the future hold for thismending maestro? “As an artist I amlooking for interesting people and mate-rial. I need to be out in the world lookingfor stories,” she says. “Hilton Als wrote abeautiful line in The New Yorker about‘living his weirdness’. That’s me. I’mawkward and comfortable at the sametime.”

I’llbedarned.

Interview | Can darning beart? In this artist’s hands,even a moth-eaten sockis a masterpiece, saysFlora Macdonald Johnston

lidded stare, from behind Palmer-stylespecs.Helooks immaculate.

I don’t know which iconic four-eyessprings first to themindof theAmericanmalewhenhe’seyewearshopping.Possi-bly it’s Caine for him, too? Or GregoryPeckasowlishAtticusFinch?MalcolmXin his brow-line horn-rims? WoodyAllen?(Lesssonow, I imagine.) Iassumethe chic but squinting Frenchmanthinks of Yves Saint Laurent, while thenearsighted Italian has Marcello Mas-troianni in 8 ½ to emulate, if he can getcloseenoughtothescreentoseehim.

But I’m a Brit, and the first pairs ofspecs I tried were very much in theHarry Palmer mould. Having beengiven the good news, I didn’t hang aboutin Specsavers. I went to Knightsbridge,to Cutler and Gross, suppliers of quirkyglasses to the creative classes since 1969.I spent a pleasant hour trying on differ-ent frames, and different personas:1960s cold warrior in two-toneD-frames; 1980s adland titan in aviator-style tortoise-shell; mid-centurystarchitect indonnishroundframes.

Ineachpair I fanciedI lookedabit likesomeoneelse:HenryKissinger;MauriceSaatchi; Philip Johnson. (A pattern ofmegalomania was emerging.) In none ofthemdidI feelquite likemyself.

After much hemming and hawing, Isettled on a pair remarkably similar tothose I’d thought of first: thick retro ace-tate frames the colour of dark tortoise-shell.VeryHarryPalmer.

I took my first ever — and, so far, lastever — selfie and posted it to Instagram.

I thought I looked like thestar of a 1960s thriller, myfamily thought I lookedlike a mid-life style crisis

mark on the garment and refilled andrepaired the holes with a neutral whitethread, giving the finished product arather beautiful blurred effect, likewhitespotsonatelevisionscreen.

Pym describes her style of mendingas “unapologetic”. Her work uses a mixof threads, colours and texture so thatsomething as simple as a pair of socksor a scarf becomes a strange visualkaleidoscope under her attention. “I’minterested in what’s wrong and off,” shesays of her mending skills, which invari-ably make old moth-eaten cashmeresand long-loved heirlooms far more

Four eyes good

Meet Celia Pym — knitwear’s own ‘damage detective’

Celia Pym — Sophie Robehmed/BBC Women’s Hour

Michael Caine photographed at home in England in 1964 with his mother and brother — Harry Dempster/Getty Images