What does a Monet and a Mr Whippy have to do with eyewear?
More than you’d think.
It started on a Tuesday afternoon. A five-year-old with ice cream running down their wrist. A walk past a small independent shop we’d never really noticed. And a piece of art in the window that stopped us in our tracks.
It wasn’t in a gallery. The artist wasn’t famous. But the work had something. Bold colour, abstract form, textures you wanted to step closer to. The kind of brushstrokes that don’t ask permission.
And it got us thinking about where inspiration actually comes from.
We spend a lot of time in this industry looking at trend reports, visiting trade shows, studying what the big brands are doing. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the moments that really shift things, the ideas that end up mattering, they don’t tend to arrive on schedule. They arrive on a Tuesday afternoon with an ice cream.
That piece of art in the window reminded us of something we already knew but had maybe stopped thinking about. Monet’s garden at Giverny wasn’t grand when he started it. It was just a garden. He painted what was in front of him, the light, the water, the colour, and it became some of the most celebrated art in history. He didn’t go looking for inspiration somewhere exotic. He found it at home.
That’s what local creativity does. It takes the ordinary and makes you see it differently. It’s the same thing independent opticians do every day, curating something personal, something with character, in a world that keeps pushing towards the same.
That encounter became the start of our “Inspired by” collection. The 3208 and 3210 are the first two frames to lead it. Each one carries that painterly quality. The 3208 comes in three colourways, one with a touch of Monet’s dappled light, one bold and romantic, one fresh and spring-like. The 3210 takes a different path, warm tones melting into cool on gold, with marbled acetate temples like a painter’s palette.
They’re frames for people who notice things. Who pick up on a colour combination or a texture and appreciate the thought behind it. The kind of people who’d stop outside a shop window on a Tuesday afternoon.
This is just the beginning. The “Inspired by” collection will grow, because inspiration doesn’t run out. It’s in the places you walk past every day, the people making things in your town, the art on the wall of the cafe you sit in every morning.
You just have to be paying attention.
These won’t last long. Like the ice cream. Order your online exclusives now at wolfeyewear.com