Persol

Persol began in 1917, when Giuseppe Ratti, a photographer with an optician's shop in Turin, started making glasses for pilots and drivers in a courtyard on Via Caboto. The name means "for the sun". In the thirties he came up with the Meflecto stem, the flexible arm that stops the frame squeezing your head. The 649 was made for Turin's tram drivers to keep the dust out, before Mastroianni put it in a film in 1961. Persol is crafted in Italy, and the pairs stocked at Oi Polloi are handmade there, mostly in Havana acetate with green lenses.