Bespoke (Wikipedia) is usually a British English term for tailored clothing made at a customer’s behest, and exactly to the customer’s specification Tom Davies studied Film and Television at the University of East Anglia before flying to China, aged 21 with his backpack, to work for a startup eyewear factory. Cutting his teeth on the factory floor, Tom helped build production from scratch whilst designing for other brands the world over. Returning to London in 2000, Tom set up his couture business, creating spectacles and sunglasses for the Rich and Famous.Even at £5,000 a frame, Tom’s waiting list sometimes ran to 12 months. Tom then decided to set up a ready-to-wear line, which was offered through top boutique opticians across the world. In 2008, Tom opened his own factory and now offers a full bespoke service through his global network of exclusive opticians. Why compromise when it comes to glasses? British spectacle designer Tom Davies brings the luxury of bespoke to frames. Consumers can spend thousands on their wardrobe. Yet when it comes to glasses, which are the defining feature of their face, they won’t countenance paying more than a couple of hundred pounds for something they will wear everyday for years on end. That, at least, was the case until British spectacle designer Tom Davies came onto the scene. In a short time, Tom has revolutionised glasses by introducing bespoke frames, expressly designed and handmade to suit a person’s face, colouring, physical characteristics and lifestyle. Bes poke fra mes ? Having a frame designed and made for you is like a combination of ordering a bespoke suit and re-designing your own face. You get sunglasses or spectacles which fit perfectly, in exactly the colours and materials you choose and designed specifically around your natural features. They will suit you better than any glasses you have ever had. Most spectacle wearers will tell you that fit is most important thing about a pair of glasses – that they’re the right size for your head and that they don’t slip down your face. Others will say colour is the most difficult bit to get right - you find the perfect frame, but want it in red. Others still know exactly what they want, but say time is the key thing for them - the time it takes to go from optician to optician until you get what you want. Or near enough. Tom Davies Bespoke frames satisfy everyone. You meet with your optician, have a sophisticated series of measurements and photos taken, select from our portfolio of materials and colours and input your design ideals into our online design wizard. Our designers will then visualise your frame and design preferences photo-realistically on your face and send you back a portfolio of proposed designs that you see exactly as they will look on your face. At this stage, you can change whatever you like, make comments and even open an online poll for your friends to vote on which design they like the best. You then choose the frame you like and wait for it to be handmade exclusively for you. Typically, you will have your unique, personalised new glasses within three weeks. Where ca n I buy A T o m Da v ies Bes poke fra me? TD Tom Davies has over 200 outlets worldwide. How much do they c o s t ? A bespoke frame will cost anything from £280 to £350. How are bes poke frame s de s i g n ed ? Just as an experienced tailor has a set group of measurements which he uses to assess body type and how the cloth will hang on an individual, Tom’s seven principles guide his team of designers when they are working on customers’ design portfolios. How are bespoke frames manufactured? Each frame is hand-made for the customer using a combination of traditional techniques and modern machinery. Tom has designed and had built shed loads of machinery specifically for the purpose of creating bespoke eyewear. Las er engraved n a me s It doesn’t matter if your Tom Davies frame is a £5,000 Couture model or a £300 Bespoke, it will still have your name laser engraved on the inside of one of the arms. This is one of the things Tom’s customers like most. It’s as discreet as personalisation can get, and we think that’s why it gives people such a buzz. Option 1Option 2Option 3 The portfolio is usually ready in 24 hours. You and your customer select which option to go for and the finished frame will be shipped in three weeks. H ow did T om come to start hi s p erso n al eyewear revoluti on? Tom considered the possibility of a viable bespoke service for spectacles when he started in the eyewear industry in 1997. Back then, living in Hong Kong and working for a small frame factory, he was frustrated that his family and friends’ heads never quite fitted his creations. He wondered for a while if it was just that everyone he knew had strange heads. But then he realised it wasn’t just his company’s frames which didn’t fit people perfectly. No one anywhere seemed, to his eye, to be wearing eyewear that was quite right for them. Manufacturing a custom-made Titanium frame is one of the key technical innovations from Tom Davies. For such a critical accessory – glasses are the first thing people see when they look at you, as well as being the windows through which you see the world – Tom thought it amazing how little attention people paid to choosing spectacles. People around the world were, in effect, taking pot luck that the frames they chose in a rush at a high street optician’s shop would not only look great on them, but feel great, fulfil the optical requirements of their prescription and be to their personal taste. So when he got back to London, Tom launched his Couture service, which involved him meeting high net-worth individuals and designing frames for them individually. After five increasingly successful years of designing such rarefied frames for the rich and famous, Tom found himself in a position to improve mankind’s face furniture to the next level. Once each frame is individually designed, our production masters handcraft each part of the bespoke frame. At £5,000 a frame, the Couture service excluded a large part of the potential market. By now Tom had learned enough about what people really want from their spectacles to expand and hand the role of designer over to a specially-trained team, with his selected band of opticians as the contact point for buyers. Oh, and he bought his own factory. Millimeter-perfect measurements are followed at each stage of production. Even a single millimeter change can effect the way the frame suits a customers natural features. B E SPOK E E Q U I PM E N T T he fi n i s hed p r o duct We think our Bespoke service is th e m o s t e x c i t i n g d e v e l o p m e n t i n O p t i c s i n r e c e n t years. Any frame from our collectio n c a n b e r e d e s i g n e d c o m p l e t e l y o r j u s t h a v e a f e w s m al l m i cr o c h an ges to allo w th e c u st o m e r t o h a v e e x a c t l y wh a t t h e y wa n t , pe rf e c t l y fitted at a price comparable to the w i d e r m a r k e t . A Selecti o n o f O U R P R The Times [Saturday] GQ Magazine ESQUIRE MAGAZINE www.tdtomdavies.com