The American sunglasses brand Jacques Marie Mage is often deemed the ‘Rolls-Royce of eyewear’ for both its fastidious production – each pair is hand-made and polished in Japan or Italy, and constructed from the highest quality cellulose acetate – and relative scarcity, with styles often running in editions of less than 500 (like Rolls-Royce, they come with the price tag to match).
It is why, in lieu of the usual brand-on-brand collaborations, Jacques Marie Mage has instead largely united with notable cultural figures, from Patti Smith and Marianne Faithfull, to the acclaimed fashion designer Haider Ackermann. Or, indeed, their estates: such is the case with a longstanding collaboration with the late film director Stanley Kubrick, whose distinctive visual eye has inspired various Jacques Marie Mage styles since 2022.
Jacques Marie Mage is reissuing its Stanley Kubrick-inspired frames
A previous collaboration saw Jacques Marie Mage inspired by Kubrick’s The Shining
These have included futuristic face-shielding frames reminiscent of those which appeared in Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, or those inspired by the 1980 horror The Shining, which were released earlier this year. The two-piece collection comprised the ‘Torrance’ sunglasses, a 70s-inspired rectangular silhouette, and the ‘Twins’ sunglasses, a more vivid butterfly shape which draws on the symbolism of ‘cinema’s most sinister siblings’. Both collections praised Kubrick’s ‘peculiar fusion of modernism and classicism, violence and absurdity,’ calling him ‘an auteur for the ages’.
This month, Jacques Marie Mage is revisiting the collaboration once again, reissuing two frames from 2022 that were inspired not by Kubrick’s movies but by the man himself. Available in new colourways, the two styles draw on two seminal decades in the director’s career: the 1940s and the 1980s. During the former, Kubrick began working in New York as a magazine photographer, before being drawn into the city’s arthouse cinema scene; during the latter, he released The Shining and Full Metal Jacket (1987).
The ‘1980’ sunglasses are inspired by those worn by Kubrick on the sets of The Shining and Full Metal Jacket
As such, the ‘1948’ has a bookish, mid-century charm, directly referencing the eyewear worn by Kubrick while photographing figures like boxer Walter Cartier and entertainer Frank Sinatra for Look magazine in the late 1940s (he began at the publication aged 17 as a staff photographer). With rounded lenses and thick-rimmed frames, they feature sterling silver hardware and are crafted from 10mm curated acetate. Jacques Marie Mage describes them as ‘charming and cerebral’. They come in four colours: classic black, polished clear acetate, bottle green and red havana tortoishell.
The ‘1980’, meanwhile, is a sleeker aviator style, inspired by the sunglasses Kubrick wore while filming The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. Featuring metal titanium rims and bridge, they have a lightweight hand-feel and also come in four colourways: silver with black lenses, gold with blue lenses, champagne gold with brown lenses, and light gold with ‘darjeeling’ lenses. Available in limited-edition numbers, they are finished with ‘1980’ engraved on the arm.
Another style from Jacques Marie Mage’s The Shining-inspired collection
‘[They] serve as a celebration of the life and creative output of one of the most brilliant, influential, and original filmmakers in cinematic history,’ say Jacques Marie Mage of the two styles. ‘Over the course of his career, [he] displayed a dynamic dedication to research and craft that shaped his films into timeless explorations of humour, hubris, horror, and hope. This unique collection of eyewear is an homage to the legacy of cinema’s obsessive genius, a sartorial tribute to the unflinching vision and aesthetic ingenuity that solidified him as an auteur for the ages.’
