The Boy’s Growing up – Harry Lary’s Eyewear
Our stylist is taken by the build quality and innovative design of Thierry Lasry’s rather good eyewear brand
Review by Nicolas Payne-Baader
Buying a new pair of glasses is never straightforward; the considerations both monetary as well as stylistically are many and at the end of the day choosing something to sit on your face for the next three years is never going to be easy. In addition to all that it’s not with much relish that one starts wading through the multitude of independent glasses brands on the market. It’s something I have experienced many, many times. You think you like a frame from a company you’ve never come across before but you have no idea whether they’re actually well-made or worth the money, or whether they might be exclusively worn by Germans who meet up and eat people they’ve met on the internet - it really is a fraught experience. So as an aid to the wading here is a guide to Harry Lary’s.
A well-established brand Harry Lary’s has been under the design stewardship of Thierry Lasry since 2002. Certainly a man who knows a thing about designing eyewear, Thierry was born to an optician father and designer mother and has been hailed throughout the industry as an innovative and versatile designer. The Harry Lary’s line are stylish and fairly modern, with the speciality being the acetate glasses that are made using acetate in exclusive colourways by august manufacturers Mazzuchelli in Italy although the actual frames and glasses are hand made in France. The colour effects are produced by using multiple layers of different acetates set on top of each other to produce something that looks a little like a geometric tortoiseshell and gives a modern edge to all the frames. The glasses are also made with metal to metal joints which are immensely strong and hard to find. All of that is a trifle technical but the overarching point is that the quality and design of these glasses is genuinely very impressive, they are so far above so much of what you see in most high street optician’s shops and with prices that range from £220 to £320 they are also not that much more expensive. Considering it’s something that’s right in the middle of your face every day for several years, it seems worth the wade. 
Enquiries: Available from Mallon & Taub in Marylebone and Adam Simmonds on Regent’s Park Road