Piero Massaro by eye size: Italian acetate, and how the five in stock run

Piero Massaro is a small Italian eyewear brand, and it is small in a way you can check. The brand's own site gives one address: Via Battisti 14, Mirano, Venezia. Mirano is a town in the Venetian hinterland, and the site says the company was founded there in 2003. Our own listings for all five frames we hold say the same thing in shop language: handmade in Italy, near Venice, in small numbers.

Three things make the frames physically different, and the first is the hardware. The brand's site describes hinges that are patented and made in AISI 316 L steel, one of the better stainless grades. It also says Massaro devised bayonet temples, unique of their kind. The awards listed on that page follow the same thread: a Silmo d'Or in 2012 for eyeglasses, a special jury prize in 2014 for the PM415, a Silmo d'Or in 2018 for sunglasses, and one in 2021 for technological innovation, for the cylindrical hinge of Massaro's “18” line. The Numerica series took a Japan Eyewear Award in Tokyo in 2019. Our listing for the PM904 in red puts it shorter: three Silmo d'Or and a special jury prize, most recently for a cylindrical hinge in 2021.

The second is the plate. The brand's site says the eyewear is made with Rhodoïd, which it calls the most precious of cellulose acetates and the only vegetable plastic material that does not come from oil processing. Acetate of that kind begins as cotton. Cotton, the site says, is the pure soul of acetate, worked by the skilled hands of the artisans into the shape and tone Massaro designed for each model.

The third is the run length. The site describes each model as made with the care a tailor gives a custom-made suit, and its limited edition page talks about one hundred single steps. Our listings add the consequence: no two acetate plates are identical, so a colour is never exactly repeated. That is worth holding on to when you are choosing between two frames of the same model in different colours, which is exactly the choice two of our five present.

The names are numbers. PM, then three digits. We hold a PM902, a PM904, a PM916 and a PM918 — four models, five frames. The number is a model. It is not a size, and it is not a shape.

That is worth saying out loud, because the numbers sit close together and the frames do not. The PM916 is 42mm across the eye. The PM918, two numbers along, is 51mm. Nine millimetres apart, and nothing in the numbering would have told you. The PM902 and PM904 are 50mm and 47mm, so the sequence does not climb with size either.

Colour is a second number, written after the model. Ours read PM916 660 for aqua and crystal, PM916 004 for red and crystal, PM918 004 for red, PM904 523 for red, and PM902 410 for dark blue. You will notice that 004 is red on two different models here. We would not promise that holds across the whole range, because we cannot show it from five frames. Read the colour name; treat the code as a reference for ordering.

Two of the five are one model in two colours. Both PM916s measure 42–29–142 with a 39mm lens. Nothing about the fit separates them. If you are deciding between the aqua and crystal and the red and crystal, you are deciding about colour and nothing else, and the plates will not come round again in the same pattern.

The six-digit numbers on our product pages — 056594, 056688, 057613, 057916 and 059245 — are our own stock numbers, not the brand's. They are useful if you ring us about a specific frame. Anywhere else, quote the model and the colour name.

The table below lists all five, sorted by eye size, so you can see the spread before the detail.

Five frames, three widths, and the whole set sits inside nine millimetres of eye size. Here is how they run.

• 42mm eye, 29mm bridge, 142mm temples — the two PM916s, about 113mm across the front, lens 39mm deep.
• 47mm eye, 24mm bridge, 142mm temples — the PM904, about 118mm across the front, lens 35mm deep.
• 50mm eye, 21mm bridge, 142mm temples — the PM902, about 121mm across the front, lens 50mm deep.
• 51mm eye, 19mm bridge, 142mm temples — the PM918, about 121mm across the front, lens 39mm deep.

Across the front is the eye size twice plus the bridge, and it is approximate — the plate runs on past the hinge by a few millimetres. It is still the number that decides whether a frame fits your face, far more than the eye size on its own.

Watch what the bridge does as the eye grows: 29mm at 42, 24mm at 47, 21mm at 50, 19mm at 51. The bridge narrows almost as fast as the lens widens, which is why the fronts converge. Nine millimetres of eye size becomes about eight millimetres across the front, and the top two frames land on about the same 121mm from different directions.

The narrow end is a pair. Both PM916s are tagged narrow in our stock, and the listing for the aqua says it reads narrow on the face, which is the point of a frame this size. The listing for the red puts the same thing the other way round: small across the front, without being small in effect.

The middle is the PM904 at about 118mm. Our listing calls it neither narrow nor wide — the width that asks the least of a face.

The top two, at about 121mm, are the widest Piero Massaro we hold, although our listings for both describe 121mm as the middle of the range and the width most faces land on. Within these five it is the wide end; across a room of frames it is a middle width. Both are true, and the table is the quickest way to see it.

All five fronts are acetate. Four are acetate throughout: the two PM916s, the PM918 in red and the PM904 in red. The fifth, the PM902 in dark blue, is acetate and metal together, and our listing puts the reason simply — two materials in one frame: the strength of metal, the colour of acetate.

The acetate is the part the brand talks about most. Its site says the eyewear is made with Rhodoïd, the most precious of cellulose acetates and the only vegetable plastic material that does not come from oil processing. The same page says the cotton is worked by the skilled hands of the artisans to take the shape and tone Massaro designed, that only top quality materials from certified companies are used, and that the production chain is entirely Italian.

What that gets you, in a shop, is colour with depth in it rather than colour laid on top. Two of our listings say it in the same words: acetate carries colour and depth in a way metal cannot, and it warms to the face as you wear it. It also means the aqua and crystal plate and the red and crystal plate are not repeatable patterns. No two plates are identical, so a colour is never exactly repeated.

The hinge is the other half of the construction. The brand's site describes patented hinges made in AISI 316 L steel, and credits Massaro with bayonet temples, unique of their kind. Our PM902 listing points at the same place: the hinge is the piece to look at, because the brand's most recent Silmo d'Or, in 2021, was for a cylindrical hinge. If you get one of these frames in your hands, open and close a temple slowly before you look at anything else.

All five are listed new and sealed, with demo lenses fitted. A demo lens is a plain blank that holds the shape while the frame is handled and shipped. It comes out when your own lenses go in, and it carries no prescription of any kind.

Four models, four drawings. Three of the five are round, one is a cat-eye and one is softly squared — and the two round models are nothing like each other.

The two PM916s are round at 42mm, about 113mm across the front. A round front that small sits well inside the width of most faces, and it reads as a deliberate choice rather than a neutral one. The aqua and crystal makes that point loudest, because the colour is doing as much work as the shape. If you have worn small round frames before and liked them, this is that frame in two colours.

The PM902 is round as well, but at 50mm across the eye with a 50mm lens height it is a different object: a deep, near-circular lens, and the deepest we hold in the brand by eleven millimetres. It covers more of the face and it has metal in it. People who find a small round too fussy sometimes get on better with a large one.

The PM918 in red is the cat-eye, and the widest eye we hold at 51mm. A cat-eye lifts at the outer corner, so the width you notice sits at the top of the frame. On a 51–19–142 that lift sits above a narrow 19mm bridge, which keeps the lenses close together and pushes the emphasis outward.

The PM904 is the square, and our listing calls it softly squared rather than square outright. At 47mm across the eye with a 35mm lens height it is the shallowest front here by four millimetres, so it reads as a horizontal frame: wider than it is deep. A squared front tends to suit people who want a defined line rather than a curve.

None of this is a rule. Shapes behave differently on different faces, and the only reliable test is putting one on and looking straight ahead.

Three numbers decide comfort, and the eye size is not one of them.

The bridge comes first. Ours run from 19mm to 29mm, which is a wide spread for five frames. The bridge is the distance between the two lenses, and it sets where the whole frame rests. Too wide and it sits low and slides; too narrow and it perches. The 29mm bridge on the PM916s is not an accident of styling — a 42mm lens has to be spaced further apart to land in front of your eyes at all. If you have a frame you already like, the numbers are printed inside one temple. Match the bridge first and the eye size second.

The temple is the easy one here. All five are 142mm, a common adult length, which means temple length is not a variable across this stock: if 142mm suits you on one of them, it suits you on all five. An optician can adjust the bend and the angle of an acetate temple with gentle heat. The length itself is fixed.

Lens height is the number people forget. Ours are 35mm on the PM904, 39mm on the two PM916s and the PM918, and 50mm on the PM902. That is a 15mm range, and it is the difference between a frame that sits between brow and cheek and one that fills the space. A deep lens on a short face will touch the cheek when you smile. A shallow one on a long face can leave a gap above the frame.

Lens height also decides which lens types will work in a frame, which is the next chapter.

We ship frames. We do not sell prescription lenses online. Lenses are fitted either in our Arlington or Dumfries shops, or by your own optician, and the frame arrives with demo lenses in it so the shape holds until then.

There are three things worth checking before you commit, and any optician can check all three in a minute.

The first is lens height against lens type. A progressive needs vertical room for the corridor between distance and reading. At 35mm the PM904 is the shallowest we hold in the brand, and not every progressive design will fit it. The 39mm frames give more room, and the PM902 at 50mm gives a great deal. Which design your prescription needs is a question for the optician who will make the lenses, not for us.

The second is your pupil distance against the width of the front. On a frame about 113mm across, like either PM916, the optical centres have to land sensibly inside a 42mm lens. A narrow lens is often kinder to a strong prescription than a wide one, because the edge has less distance to travel before it thickens. But a front that is too narrow for your face pushes the centres out of position, and only the measurement settles it.

The third is the lens itself. An acetate frame holds a lens in a groove cut into the rim, so the lens edge has to be thick enough to take that groove. A very thin high-index lens in a large opening — the PM902's 50mm lens height, for instance — is a conversation to have before you order, not after.

If you would rather, take the frame to your optician still sealed. Nothing we send has to be altered before it is glazed, and the demo lenses come out in seconds.

Prices first. Four of the five are $890: the PM916 in red and crystal, the PM916 in aqua and crystal, the PM918 in red and the PM902 in dark blue. The PM904 in red is $790. None of the five carries a reduced price. Those figures are for the frame with demo lenses in it; prescription lenses are separate and are not sold here.

Condition is the same across all five: new and sealed. Nothing here has been on display or tried on.

Colour is where the stock is lopsided. Three of the five are red — the PM916 in red and crystal, the PM918 and the PM904. The other two are aqua and crystal, and dark blue. If red is not for you, the choice narrows to two frames at two quite different widths: about 113mm and about 121mm across the front.

Each of these is one of a kind in the literal sense. The plates are cut from acetate that is never exactly repeated, so the frame you are looking at is the frame. When it sells it is gone, and the next one in that model will not carry the same pattern. That is true of the whole shop, but it is more obviously true of a crystal-laminated plate than of a plain black one.

If you are torn between two, the honest advice is to decide the width first and the colour second. A 42mm round and a 51mm cat-eye are not competing for the same place on a face. Use the table to pick your width, then read the two listings side by side.

Ring us if you want more photographs, a measurement checked, or to know which shop is holding a frame. We would rather answer a question before a frame ships than after.