Italian eyewear brands: Blackfin, Res/Rei, Piero Massaro and more

Two facts get run together when people look for Italian eyewear: where a brand comes from, and where its frames are made. This guide goes by the second. Every frame we list from Blackfin, Res/Rei, Piero Massaro, Oscar Mamooi, Gamine and KUBORAUM carries a Made in Italy tag, and our Made in Italy page gathers them in one place.

Blackfin, Res/Rei, Piero Massaro and Oscar Mamooi are Italian on both counts, and all are in the Veneto, the region of north-east Italy that runs from the Dolomites down to Venice. Blackfin is in Agordo, in the mountains of the province of Belluno. Res/Rei is in Treviso. Piero Massaro is in Mirano and Oscar Mamooi in Mestre, both on the mainland side of Venice.

Gamine and KUBORAUM are not Italian brands. Gamine was born in New York in 2016, and KUBORAUM is a Berlin brand that says its frames are dreamed in Berlin and handmade in Italy.

Some brands we stock are left out. Our listings do not record where Cartier, J.F. Rey, Oliver Peoples or OVVO frames are made, and we would rather leave a brand out than guess. LAPIMA is left out for a different reason: it cuts its frames from Italian acetate, but makes them in its own atelier in Brazil. Italian material does not make an Italian frame.

Talk of Italian eyewear soon leads to the province of Belluno, in the Dolomites. The Museo dell'Occhiale, the eyewear museum in Pieve di Cadore, says the Belluno eyewear industry was born at the end of the nineteenth century through the courage and enterprise of a few pioneers, and grew to become the world's leading district for the trade. Hundreds of companies, large and small, work in its Dolomite valleys, and the museum's Terre dell'Occhiale project takes visitors through the Cadore, the Alpago and the Agordino to see them. The museum itself opened in 1990.

Blackfin is part of that story. Its own site says that in 1971 Maria Pramaor opened her own frame-making workshop in Agordo, after nine years as an employee in the industry, in an area the brand says was already famous for its eyewear and the care with which it was made. Blackfin has stayed: it says it was born in Agordo and is still there today.

The other Italian brands here work lower down, in the plain around Treviso and Venice. Res/Rei's timeline begins in 2012, and Piero Massaro says he founded his company in the Venetian hinterland in 2003.

One thing a made-in line cannot tell you is whether a frame will fit. It names the country where a frame was made. It does not name the workshop, and a frame made with great care in the wrong width is still the wrong width. That is why each brand below has a table of the frames in stock, with their measurements.

Blackfin makes metal frames, and every Blackfin frame we list is metal. The brand's site says each frame is made only of Japanese titanium but worked entirely in Italy: it buys the raw titanium in Japan and does the rest in Agordo. It dates its work in titanium to 1991, when Maria Pramaor and her husband Primo Del Din set up a small department for the metal and sent their technical experts to Japan. Its word for the approach is neomadeinitaly, and it puts the point plainly: everything it creates, it says, is conceived and produced in Italy.

The site gives figures for the metal. It says its titanium is as tough as steel but weighs 40% less, and is twice as strong as aluminium. It says the temples and bridge of each frame are cut from a sheet of beta-titanium only five tenths of a millimetre thick, and that these thin parts let the frame adapt to the face. The brand also says its colours are created by hand in Italy, and our listings give most Blackfin frames more than one colour, such as Forest Green and Anodized Yellow on the Catalina.

The Blackfin frames we list run from a 44mm eye to a 55mm eye, about 110mm to 126mm across the front, with bridges from 16mm to 22mm and temples from 135mm to 150mm. The small end is round: the Rye at 44-22-145 and the Esbjerg at 45-22-145 both pair a small lens with a wide bridge, for a narrow face on a broad or low nose. The wide end is the Edgartown, a rectangle at 55-16-145 on the narrowest bridge, for a nose that stands out. The Blackfin fit guide goes through every model.

Res/Rei opens its making page, titled Handmade in Italy with love, with a plain sentence: our journey starts in Treviso, Italy. The brand says it does as much as it can itself. It designs its frames and its acetate, takes its own photographs and makes its own website. Its timeline begins in 2012.

The acetate is the point. Res/Rei says it designs its acetate patterns itself, drawing on furniture, photography, architecture and cinema, and that each pattern it designs is exclusive to the brand. It also says technology alone is not enough to make quality frames, and that each pair is the result of know-how passed from one generation to the next. Every Res/Rei frame we list is acetate, and many mix colours in one front, such as Pink and Black on the Pyramid or Green and Brown Havana on the Hella.

Res/Rei runs the widest of the Italian-made brands in our tables. The frames we list run from a 47mm eye to a 54mm eye, about 119mm to 128mm across the front, with bridges from 16mm to 26mm. Most temples are 140mm, with the Maestro at 145mm and the York II at 150mm. At one end, the Hella and the Lush pair a 53mm eye with a 16mm bridge, which suits a nose that is thin and stands out. At the other, the Maestro pairs a 47mm eye with a 26mm bridge, for a broad or low nose. The Loop has the deepest lens, at 47mm. The Res/Rei fit guide takes the range model by model.

Piero Massaro is the brand of a designer who, in his own words on its site, was born in Sicily, worked in Milan and settled in the Veneto, where he founded his company in the Venetian hinterland in 2003. The brand's office is in Mirano, in the province of Venice. Its Hand Made in Italy page speaks of an entirely Italian production chain, and of cellulose acetate worked by the skilled hands of artisans.

Two details set the brand apart. The first is the edition: Piero Massaro says each of its collections is made in a set number of pieces for each model and colour, and that the number is 100. The second is the way a front is built. The brand's step-by-step page takes a frame from a hand drawing to gluing, one sheet on top of another until the desired effect is achieved, then to milling the front, fitting the hinges, engraving the code, polishing and fitting the lenses. The designer says he devised his own bayonet temples, designs his hinges in fine steel and sets screws with a horizontal cut, a detail he takes from fine watchmaking. His page lists Silmo d'Or awards, from the Paris optical fair, in 2012 and 2018.

The Piero Massaro frames we list run from a 42mm eye to a 51mm eye, about 113mm to 121mm across, all with 142mm temples. The PM916 is the unusual one: a 42mm round on a 29mm bridge, which suits a small face with a broad, low nose. The PM902, in acetate and metal, has a 50mm lens that is 50mm deep, very nearly a circle. The PM918 is a cat-eye at 51-19-142. The Piero Massaro fit guide has the details.

Oscar Mamooi gives its address in Mestre, on the mainland side of Venice. The designer's page on its site describes a self-taught start, after years as the door selector at the Milan club Plastic, and a love of art and fashion that led quickly to a first collection. The site names one technique outright: starting from nature as a source of inspiration, it says, advanced technologies such as hot pressing are used to give the collection life. Our listings record every Oscar Mamooi frame we hold as made in Italy; the brand's site does not describe its workshops, so neither do we.

The frames are sculpted, and the site dates and describes each model. The Innocence, from 2023, follows the wingspan of a butterfly. The Bachelorette, from 2023 and the Iceland collection, is square and geometrically sculpted. The Volta, from 2020, has crystalline, jagged shapes. The Immature, also from 2020, evokes a cat-eye with geometric volumes like walls of ice. The Joga, from 2022, evokes the flight of Icarus, and the Paradisia, from 2020, a return to the purity of nature.

The Oscar Mamooi frames we list run from a 48mm eye to a 54mm eye, about 115mm to 126mm across, all with 145mm temples. Most are cat-eyes; the Bachelorette is the square. The lens depth varies more than the width: the Immature's lens is 30mm deep, a long, low front, and the Paradisia's is 48mm. That matters for a progressive lens, so check the lens height in the table. The Oscar Mamooi fit guide goes through each model.

Gamine is not an Italian brand. Its site says it was born in New York in 2016, and that each collection is conceived and designed by its sole founder and designer, Sergei Zubkouski, who came to eyewear from art school on a dare from a friend. New York, the brand says, remains its soul, though its designer's heart led him to Paris. Its models are named after neighbourhoods in cities around the world, which is why the frames we list carry names such as Trastevere, Shinjuku and Sodermalm.

Our listings record every Gamine frame we hold as made in Italy, which is why the brand is in this guide. Gamine's own site does not say where its frames are made, so we cannot quote it on the point. What its product pages do describe is materials: cellulose acetate on most shapes, and stainless steel or titanium on the metal ones. The Persta, which the brand says brings together New York eyewear design and Parisian jewellery craftsmanship, is described as titanium plated in 18-carat gold or platinum.

Gamine's smallest fronts are the smallest in this guide. The frames we list run from a 41mm eye to a 49mm eye, about 104mm to 122mm across, with bridges from 21mm to 24mm. The Persta and the Shinjuku are both small rounds at a 41mm eye, and the Nakazakicho, a geometric shape at 43-21-148, is barely wider. At the other end, the Trastevere is an oval at 49-24-150. The Gamine fit guide has the rest, and our narrow frames page gathers small fronts from every brand.

KUBORAUM is a Berlin brand. Its site says all its masks, its word for its frames, are entirely dreamed in Berlin and handmade in Italy, and every KUBORAUM frame we list carries our Made in Italy tag. The frames are acetate, metal, or the two together, and the sizes cover a wide range, from a 39mm eye to a 56mm eye.

Every KUBORAUM frame here is on sale, and final sale, so it cannot be returned. Most are single pieces: once one sells, it is gone. The KUBORAUM page shows every frame in stock, and the KUBORAUM fit guide explains how its sizes run.

Each table gives the three numbers usually printed inside a temple arm, eye size, bridge and temple, then the lens height and the width across the front. That width is two eye sizes plus the bridge, so it is approximate, but it is the quickest way to hold a new frame against one you already own. Measure your current pair from the outer edge of one lens to the outer edge of the other and look for rows within a few millimetres. The frame size guide explains the numbers.

Across the tables in this guide, the fronts run from about 104mm, on Gamine's smallest rounds, to about 128mm, on Res/Rei's widest. Look at the bridge next. A small lens on a wide bridge, like the Piero Massaro PM916 or the Blackfin Rye, settles low on a short nose. A narrow bridge, like the Res/Rei Lush or the Blackfin Edgartown, holds a larger front high on a nose that stands out.

We sell frames only. No prescription lenses, single-vision or progressive, are sold online. An optician fits the lenses, one of ours or your own, and confirms with your measurements and prescription whether a frame suits the lens you need. Lens height is the figure to take to that conversation: a shallow front gives a progressive lens less room than a deep one. The lens guide covers what to bring.

Shipping within the US is free and insured. Returns are accepted within 7 days of delivery, with a 15% restocking fee, except on sale frames, which are final sale. Frames made elsewhere have their own guides: French eyewear brands and Japanese eyewear brands.