The LGR Frame: Italian Sunglasses, Made the Old Way

Most sunglasses you can buy in 2026 were designed last season and made this year. The frames were extruded, the lenses pressed, the assembly done in volume. Which results in a piece of eyewear that is technically functional and culturally invisible; you stop seeing it on yourself within a week, and so does everyone else.

LGR is made from the opposite ethos: that a frame is a piece of craft worn on the face every day for a decade, and that the work that goes into it should be visible from the moment it is picked up. The story of how the brand started is, on its own, worth understanding before the first pair.

A box of frames in Asmara

In 1936, an Italian war photographer named Raffaello Bini was sent to Asmara, then a colonial city in Italian Eritrea, by the Istituto Luce. When his assignment ended, he stayed. He opened a small store called Foto Ottica Bini, selling and developing photographic film. As the business grew, he expanded into optical frames and sunglasses, importing directly from Italian workshops to serve the Italian community in the city. He lived and worked in Asmara from 1936 until 1976, when the Eritrean civil war forced him to leave behind his shop, his factory, and most of what he had built.

Almost three decades later, in 2005, the Italian and Eritrean governments awarded Raffaello an indemnification, and he was permitted to return to recover what could be recovered. He brought his grandson, Luca Gnecchi Ruscone, with him. They spent a month in the country. Among the items in his grandfather's old warehouse, Luca found a small collection of sunglasses, imported from Italy half a century before, sitting unworn since.

"A small collection of sunglasses, imported from Italy half a century before, sitting unworn since."

Luca brought them back to Italy. Word spread. Friends and friends-of-friends began asking where they could find a pair. Luca traced the frames back to their original Italian manufacturers, small workshops still using the techniques of the 1950s and 60s, and started a small production. By 2008, he was showing at the Silmo eyewear fair in Paris and was profiled in Vogue Paris. The brand is named for him: Luca Gnecchi Ruscone.

What "handmade in Italy" actually means here

"Handmade" is a word that has been emptied by overuse. With LGR, it has a specific meaning, and the meaning is in the workshop, the materials, and the time.

Every LGR frame is made in small Italian artisan workshops by craftsmen who use the same techniques the original manufacturers used in the 1950s. The frame material is cellulose acetate, a plant-based plastic with the depth, warmth, and tactile quality of horn or tortoiseshell. Unlike injection-moulded acetate, LGR's acetate is cut from sheets and polished by hand in cycles that take days, not minutes. The polish is what gives a quality acetate frame its characteristic depth; light moves into the material rather than off it.

The lenses are tempered mineral glass, not polycarbonate. Mineral glass offers the highest level of optical clarity available in eyewear and is significantly more scratch-resistant than the plastic lenses used in most sunglasses today. It is also heavier, which is why the rest of the industry abandoned it. LGR did not, because the difference is visible the first time you put a pair on.

A few things separate a quality LGR frame from a competently made imitation:

• The depth of the polish on the acetate. The frame should look as if light is moving inside the material, not bouncing off it.
• The weight of the lenses. Mineral glass has a perceptible heft that polycarbonate does not.
• The fit of the hinges. They should move with quiet precision, not loosely or stiffly.
• The bridge. On a well-made frame, the bridge sits without pinching, slipping, or leaving marks.

Where they come together

LGR is the eyewear in the collection because the brand operates by the same principles as the houses around it. Italian, family-led, material-led, made in places where the work has always been done. The collection is small and considered, the frames are built to outlast the season, and the story behind the brand - a grandson finding a forgotten box in a city his family had to leave behind - is genuinely heart-warming.

Available online or in-store to try on in-person at 48 Curzon Street.