In search of the world’s coolest shades

Cramped, asymmetric and den-like, it brims with a charm that emanates directly from its owners: London-born John Morris and his wife Arden who, after meeting at a party in Primrose Hill in 1982, married later that summer in Arden’s native New York, three days after John’s 20th birthday. More than four decades later, the pair make a formidable team, and for the last 15 years they have dedicated themselves to a shared mission: scouring the globe for coveted vintage eyewear.

“Scavenging is an art form,” says John, who founded the shop with Arden in 2014. “I’ve never considered that word derogatory – we find things of no obvious value and bring them back to life.” It’s an art form they have been honing for the best part of the last 30 years, from picking their way through rag yards across the Midlands and Yorkshire in search of old cashmere or vintage football shirts to plundering sports shop basements for deadstock. “We had a shop in Camden Town for about 20 years but vintage clothing became a diminishing resource with too many people looking for it. Eventually it dwindled and we stopped.”

The switch to sunglasses came in the early 2010s while John was trawling through a recycling centre and discovered several branded pairs. With his “scavenger’s antennae” aroused and confident in his ability to turn a profit, the find not only prompted a change in business but a full-blown love affair.

“Glasses are beautiful because they’re transformative; they allow you to be a chameleon,” John says. “They’re also small and manageable and succinct: you can hold a pair in your hand. It’s not like a damaged suit that’s only restorable at a massive cost. With glasses you can polish back the acetate, take off the hinges and the sides, you can restretch, resize, reshape with heat – you can bring them back from the dead. So they’re a fantastic accessory, they’re wonderful to work with. And you can fit 800 pairs in two suitcases.”

Just about every surface, drawer and shelf in Kings Cross Eyes is filled with glasses, all of which have been personally sourced by John and Arden on multiple trips a year across Europe and North America. “Initially, we were using the internet as a research tool and visiting old opticians to ask themif they had any dusty boxes in their basements,” says John. “About 12 years ago, I took an RV from Texas to San Francisco and truffle-pigged the whole route for glasses. I could have filled the RV twice. I found hundreds of the US air force issue American Opticals, which is  you see in Apocalypse Now and the one Robert De Niro wears in Taxi Driver. Ironically, they’re massively sought-after in Vietnam.”

East Asia is just one of several global territories that John and Arden sell to, with roughly 70% of their business made up of wholesale to other dealers. Like the highly coveted American Opticals, the value of sunglasses is not only governed by rarity: the most sought-after treasures are often enmeshed with equal parts Hollywood fantasy and historical narrative. “Prior to the Vietnam war, the French colonial police in Vietnam wore gold-filled glasses made by a French company based in Hong Kong called Solex,” says John. “They are enormously popular in Vietnam today and sell for about £5,000 a pair.”

“The specific model is Apollo and I think in all these years we’ve only found three,” adds Arden.

Closer to home, the pair regularly make road trips across Europe, through France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Away from cities, they meet trusted contacts in remote areas or drop in to chance locations in hope of a rare find. “We come across big piles of glasses because we specialise in looking for them,” says John. “One of our friends in Germany is almost as mad as we are. He makes collections from old opticians and other sources, and he breaks down the acetate and recycles it to fill potholes. We see him four times a year and spend the best part of a week going through his mountains [of glasses]. The only problem is we have to get to them before he destroys them.” Together, the pair estimate that to accumulate a thousand pairs of glasses, they look through 10 times that number, often working 14 hours a day.

Are there any particular grails they dream of discovering?

“That’s bad luck,” claims Arden. “It’s whatever comes.”

Pressed on the matter, however, John says: “It’s For John, “it’s early 90s Cartier Giverny with the rosewood, but vintage Ray-Ban is also of great interest. If you think of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda’s character with the cool leather jacket, he’s wearing a pair of gold-filled Olympian Ray-Bans. They’re a particularly rare model and hugely sought-after in Malaysia; they love Ray-Ban there.”

John and Arden are happy to divulge details of their treasure hunts but only to a point, with certain sources kept strictly off record. “There are more people doing what we do now than before,” says Arden, “so it’s getting harder, but we all know each other.” For the most part, this international community of eyewear obsessives is collaborative, with buyers and sellers maintaining open lines of communication over their finds. “I work with one particular dealer in New York who specialises in German Cazals,” explains John. “Cazals are big, extrovert glasses that got picked up by the hip-hop scene in places like the Bronx and Brooklyn during the 80s – people were getting mugged and eventually killed for them. But if I ever find Cazals, this guy in New York is my go to.”

While appointments can be booked in advance, any visit to Kings Cross Eyes feels like a personal consultation. John and Arden’s love of eyewear is matched by their knowledge of its mechanics: the myriad ways sunglasses can transform a face and how to match the two; or how lens tint, nose tips and framing options can each subtly affect aura. A tight winding staircase that spans all three shop floors leads to a basement workshop, affectionately referred to by John as “the engine room”. Here lies the bulk of their treasure, stored by category in large plastic tubs where they await adjustment, repair or custom modification before being sold.

“Michael is our main man in the workshop, but we were self-taught,” says John. “We didn’t really know what we were doing initially – at first I used olive oil on knackered acetate in the hope I could make it shiny again,” he laughs.

“It’s a learning process,” continues Arden. “When we got the polishing wheel we didn’t know it needed an exhaust, and then we learned what kind of wax was needed and what fluids to use.”

With no thoughts of retirement, John is busy planning a three-week trip across France, Germany and Italy, with a hit list for each country. “I’m hoping to find some Persol Ratti in Italy, which was a favourite of Steve McQueen; in France, I’m hoping for some Essilor, Morel, Henri Jullien or Birch, all of which are made in the Jura region, a big producer of glasses and very famous for its acetate. In Germany, I’m looking for Neostyle, Metzler, Marwitz, Rodenstock and Nigura.”

Despite the obvious excitement in his voice, the days of “grafting 14 hours looking through thousands of glasses” are numbered. Instead, the couple have looked to secure the longevity of their business elsewhere, most notably in film and TV, with costume departments clamouring for their archive. “We did Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and episodes of Black Mirror,” says John. “We do loads for Netflix and Paramount, and we’re looking to develop an archive for film and styling … so we’re not planning on packing up anytime soon.”

Photograph by Andy Hall/the Observer