Dior: Round, aviator or rectangle Designs and famous oversized sunglasses

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The history of Dior vintage eyewear is as exciting as that of the fashion designer himself.
Christian Dior is considered the most famous and influential couturier in the world. He helped Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent to world fame and was the first to apprehend the lucrative licensing business. As early as 1947, Christian Dior had granted a license for the perfume business. The “Miss Dior” women's fragrance still exists today.
In the 1950s, Christian Dior also granted an eyewear license to the New York optician Monroe Levoy, who had founded the company TURA. Tura produced the first Dior glasses and sunglasses, which were decorated with numerous jewelry applications. Tura Dior eyewear was haute couture glasses that were only available to a very select group of buyers. Moreover, Tura only made eyewear for women.
All this changed in 1969 when the German eyeglass manufacturer Wilhelm Anger and his company Optyl succeeded in acquiring the license from Dior and thus concluding a direct licensing agreement.
Optyl managed to produce functional and, above all, affordable designer eyewear from haute couture designs. The Dior eyewear reached a wide audience and not only the model on the catwalk. Within a few years, Optyl had turned luxury sunglasses into glasses for everyday wear.
As early as the mid-1970s, the Dior eyewear collection was dominating the optician industry and had become an indispensable part of any good optician's business. The success of Optyl's Dior eyewear continued without interruption and was continuously expanded until the 1990s.
There was nothing in the Dior eyewear range that did not exist: The oversized sunglasses made of the Optyl plastic of the same name, the fine metal glasses for ladies, the striking aviator glasses, the timeless unisex glasses... when it came to manufacturing eyewear, there were simply no limits.
The Monsieur series from the 80s was the most successful line of the Dior eyewear collection.
The Dior Monsieur series consisted of elegant men's designer glasses, which could be beautifully glazed as either sunglasses or as prescription glasses. These include classic aviator glasses, round panto glasses or timeless, square men's glasses made of metal or Optyl plastic.
The Dior eyewear license was sold to the Italian Safilo Group in 1996, which in 2016 extended the license with Dior again until 2020.
In our range, you will only find Dior vintage glasses from the Optyl era or even older Dior glasses from the times of TURA.