Claire Goldsmith: I didn't know. When you are surrounded by something, you take it for granted and at the time, I was very young and the company stopped trading in 1985, so I was eleven. Until then, I can't say I was particularly aware of how well known we were as a brand. I remember actually saying to my dad once, "I want a pair of Gucci sunglasses', and he said "What do you want a pair of Gucci sunglasses for? We make sunglasses - why would you buy that?"

I think that is one of the reasons why we struggled and eventually stopped trading, because licensing became a massive thing. Brands like Gucci and Prada started introducing eyewear, which was a new concept to everybody because they could buy into brands that they could not afford before. It has taken twenty years for people to realise that Gucci glasses are not the quality that you would expect from Gucci. The big brands have been careless and have allowed rubbish to come out of China for five dollars. You pay for the brands, not for the quality. I do not think that is what high end luxury is about, high-end luxury is about the quality of the product, and the brands support that.

So, it took me until I was nineteen (I was at university studying marketing) to think about eyewear and what I wanted to do with my life and that there was a brand in my family. My father had passed away, so i asked my uncle to tell me more about Oliver Goldsmith. "Oh, we made the glasses for Michael Caine, Peter Sellers, Audrey Hepburn etc." I said "Oh my God, that is amazing - why don't we do it anymore?". He said that it was all in the attic, was too long ago and he couldn't be bothered. I said to him that I wanted to relaunch Oliver Goldsmith, and he suggested that I finish university and then we would speak about it. Four years later, I said again that I wanted to relaunch the brand. He said, "maybe go and get a job, a first job, before you launch a company". So, I did five years of working for big blue-chip companies and all along I was thinking that Oliver Goldsmith was a great brand, a great story and I love it, and I think other people will love it. At the time, vintage was coming back in a massive way, so I said to my uncle "now is the time". He finally let me into his attic and I spent four days in there. On one side he had boxes with glasses in, every frame we ever made, dated and in perfect condition. On the other side, he had the same arrangement with press cuttings. To be able to pick up the frame and then look at the article that said "Oliver Goldsmith" made the glasses for Audrey Hepburn - it had integrity, and it was authentic. You didn't have to believe me, you could see that this was all true. I then found the visitors books from the original offices, which were in Soho. On the first page is Peter Sellers in 1966, and there are so many: Lulu, Grace Kelly - there are celebrities all over it.

So, that is really where it all started for me. 2005 was when I decided that I wanted to relaunch the brand. We started hand making the frames downstairs. I would walk around with a bag of vintage Oliver Goldsmith glasses and would take a selection of materials. I would then ask the retailer what he wanted and in what colour. It was good, and it started to work. Very quickly, the story got out that Oliver Goldsmith were back and the press were interested. Somebody from Harvey Nichols read about it, and they telephoned. I then realised that making them one by one, one a day was not going to hold up. So, I started to look at production. I do some of my production in Japan and have recently started looking at doing some in Italy.

CG: I think it was because my grandfather was a marketing pioneer. In the late 40s, early 50s, cinema really began to take hold - it was a big night out, people would get dressed up to go and see these actors on a huge screen, and my grandather felt that these people were becoming icons. He thought that if these people were wearing his glasses, other people would want to be like them. So, he started phoning all of the film companies saying "if you need eyewear for the wardrobe, call me and I will make anything you need". He started to get involved with Givenchy, who did all of Audrey Hepburn's outfits, and after designing the outfit, would come and present it and say that they needed some glasses to go with it. It is product placement now, but back then, nobody was doing it and nobody thought

CG: My great grandfather started the company in 1926, when glasses were a medical necessity. You wore them because you couldn't see. He wore them and didn't like it, and wanted to make something a little more interesting. There was a guy in the factory next to him in soho who made buttons for clothing and my great grandather heard that he had some of this amazing new material called plastic. He went next door and swapped some old spectacles for a red, blue and yellow sheet of plastic. One month later he came out with the first ever colourful spectacle frames. That was a turning point because what he was doing, was injecting fashion and flare into eyewear. Those frames are actually in the Victoria & Albert Museum under the label ‘Oliver Goldsmith: the originators of fashion eyewear'. But, I think that it became more of a statement, as the glasses became bolder, with thicker acetates etc. People stare at other people's eyes - it is what we do to read each other. Therefore, the focus is very much on the face. My grandfather kept pushing the fact that you wouldn't have one pair of shoes or one handbag, so why should you have one pair of glasses? You should have glasses for the evening, with gold sides that are smart, glasses for the daytime etc.

He wrote a funny story about being at the fishmongers one day. There was a girl working there who wore glasses. He knew her, and he stood and watched her cutting the fish and then pushing the glasses up on her face as they began to slip. That night, he saw her at a party and she was wearing the same glasses, and he knew that she wasn't going to smell that good, so pushing the idea of eyewear being a fashion accessory.

Sunglasses in the last five years have really come to the forefront of fashion. People are now willing to spend money on sunglasses, handbags and shoes have always been stupid money but sunglasses used to be a bit of an add on, people used to say "I will just get a cheap pair". People are thinking, I want good lenses and I want a good pair. The magazines have caught onto that and it has become a more prominent accessory.

CG: I think that a major fact was that my grandfather retired and left it to my dad and uncle, and they had a difference of opinion on where they wanted to take the company. They spent a lot of time arguing about where they wanted to go with the company and couldn't agree. When you do that, you take your eye off the ball and end up looking internally. At the same time, there was a massive issue with licensing. In my industry, there are three main companies and between them they make pretty much all of the brands you can think of. Gucci, Prada, Dior, Diesel - I have even seen Celine Dion eyewear. Every man and his dog has an eyewear collection. But, at that time, it was very novel and very new. People wanted those big brands and a little quirky British company like Oliver Goldmsmith, hand-making their frames was not what people were after. There was nothing untoward between my dad and uncle, they went their separate ways and I think the brand needed that rest in order to come back.

Things have come full circle - vintage and appreciation for quality have finally come back. People are questioning much much more now "what am I paying for - explain the value". We always get comments because people like dealing with us. Essentially we are a family run business doing a beautiful thing, with passion.

CG: I try to do what I call ‘following a blueprint'. There was a reason we were hugely successful and the reason was in my grandfather's thinking and strategy. Unfortunately, he did not write a manual so it is a case of reading all of the history and reading his interviews. It was a very simple, clean vision: make something well and always be innovative. Don't look over your shoulder at what your competitors are doing, don't care what your competitors are doing. I have followed a blueprint and I have used original design, but for four years I have learnt about why Oliver Goldsmith glasses are so comfortable. Looking at his designs, his balance, nose bridge shapes has allowed me to take that learning and attempt to launch my own optical collection. Oliver Goldsmith is a retrospective brand, and it should remain true to that. If you want vintage style (and there will always be a demand), it's an Oliver Goldsmith frame that you should buy. If you want something new, with all of the Oliver Goldsmith qualities and values, then you should probably buy into Claire Goldsmith, which is going to be stuff that we have been learning about for four years. At some point, people are going to say ‘enough of vintage'. The 90s were the last real fashion - 2000 was the 70s, 2005 was the 80s etc. By creating something under my name, I am explaining that a new generation is doing something new and the old generation are staying true to the vintage style.

Left: BAMBOO AVIATOR.

Right: MASK, originally created in 1966 for Vogue.

CG: For me, there are four. Peter Sellers and Michael Caine are my two men - there is some amazing David Bailey photography with those two in it. In the women, it has to be Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, who are just two of my favourite iconic women from that period.

CG: I get asked that a bit. It is funny now, because everything ‘celebrity' is so diluted. It is all a bit hyper-reality. It is more of a case of what celebrities I like, rather than who I think is the coolest person. I love Robbie Williams, I try not to, but I can't help it. I was drunk at three in the morning, my husband was away and I saw him wearing my glasses on the MTV music awards, and I couldn't phone anyone. I was really pleased about that. I like to see them on a beautiful face - Gwenyth Paltrow had a pair on not so long ago and they looked great on her. I don't really wish for celebrities to wear my glasses because I have some amazing private customers. Really stylish and cool people who walk down the street and look great in their OG's. I just want to give the glasses to them because they look so good. I don't really do give-aways, much to the frustration of my PR company.

CG: Well, there is an entry point to bespoke, where for £350 you get a pair of glasses that come from a basic template. The idea is that you would get 12 patten frames to choose from and we would find a frame that suits your face. When we have found the frame that suits your face, we would then choose the material. Once you have picked your material, you would choose your lens. We have everything from vintage glass lenses to various different gradients. When you have picked your lens, we have special bridge measurers, which allow us to make the glasses to suit your bridge and temple length. It takes about six weeks and you can have your initials/name engraved on the inside, and that is essentially how the bespoke service starts. But, we have a guy in Canada who is just a complete glasses nut. He will send us drawings, and then we will do drawings that we send back. He will say yes or no, and then we eventually make a prototype. We send the prototype to him and he then gives us feedback. When he finally signs it off, we keep that on a shelf with his name on it - that is his private frame that we would not make for anyone else. He can then phone us up and ask for those glasses in different colours and materials.

CG: There are all these rules about round faces needing these shapes and square faces needing these shapes etc. Personally, I have never seen a pattern of rule like that in my life. I have a technique where I get you to try on several pairs really quickly, which allows me to have an idea of what size of frame suits you. This is why I don't sell online, because I don't think you can determine what suits you by looking at a picture.

CG: I think it is a route to market that you can't ignore. A lot of my customers sell online, but I personally would rather someone came in and got the full service in order to understand how glasses fit. I stand on the tube and see people with terrible fitting glasses all the time.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE PIECE FROM THE COLLECTION?

CG: A frame called Ingema. It has triangular temples that are hand-carved. For me, it is face furniture. You put them on, and people are going to notice them. They are made from 8mm acetate which is the thickest acetate you can get.

DO YOU JUST MAKE PLASTIC GLASSES?

CG: Yes, we do. Oliver goldsmith never did metal because we always wanted to be the opposite. Glasses had always been made from metal, and they were not innovative. Nowadays, metal frames are a big market but making metal frames are an investment. You have to create moulds that are about £10,000 and then you have to make enough of them.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON SUNGLASSES IN THE WINTER?

CG: I think the sun shines in Winter. I don't think sunglasses are necessarily good in nightclubs. If you are cool enough to style it out, then good. Each to their own.

WHO DESIGNS THE OLIVER GOLDSMITH COLLECTION?

CG: We have two designers, Brian and Jesse, who present designs to me. We don't mess around too much with the Oliver Goldsmith designs, but we might make tweaks to them such as making them a bit smaller or more suited to today. On the CG stuff we are doing now, Brian and Jesse have been the lead designers. My role is probably more like an editor of a magazine, although I do find myself grabbing a pencil and making changes. I do have a lot of respect for people who have dedicated their life to being a designer, they are very particular people and they are very conscientious about what they do. There is something to be said for the fact that I am a consumer and I am my own target market. I come at this whole job as a layman. I hear all the time ‘we don't do it like that' and I ask ‘why not?'. Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that they went into something not knowing about it at all, but they went in with passion to do it better than someone else. If you come at something without that training, you look at it in a different way and you can execute things differently. It's that that stands out in the end. One of the strangest comments I got was that on my glasses, I write the model name and I write the colour. An optician said ‘that is really genius!'. It is because all of the other companies print long serial numbers, which means that one digit wrong and you get the wrong frame and the wrong colour. It is common sense - my name is Claire, you don't call me 4578. Common sense prevails.

WHAT ARE THIS YEARS TRENDS IN EYEWEAR?

CG: I think that vintage is going to start to calm down. I saw Nike making Michael Caine style glasses and when a brand like Nike start doing that, it has become a bandwagon, and you know it is coming to an end. I think that people are going to want to see something new and design-led. Vintage will be one pair of glasses that you have in your collection. I also think that people will look to invest in one or two good pairs, because of the way that the economy has gone, people are less wasteful. Shape wise, I see people writing that the ‘round-eye' is in fashion now etc. Again, I think that people's choices are so varied that just because a magazine says one thing is in fashion, doesn't mean people are going to follow it. I have become a little disillusioned with fashion magazines and press. My customer is an independent thinker and if you said that the ‘round-eye' is in fashion, they will go and buy a ‘square-eye', just to be different.

CG: I like a strong vintage frame on a guy. There are still a lot of my friends who say that they are not cool enough for my glasses, but they wear these horrible Oakley's and they look like bugs. When it first started again, I thought that the wayfarer was cool but now I think it's a kids frame that every man and his dog wears. I like a really masculine frame, like some of ours with the big 8-pin hinge. Chunky, bold and strong lines. Men are too scared of expressing themselves through eyewear. My customer is the minority. We are truly a niche company who appeal to a niche group of people - it is high end, style conscious people. American men are a lot more conservative with their colours, and will stick to the black and tortoiseshell, whereas the Europeans will wear more flamboyant colours.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF EYEWEAR?

CG: I think that it needs to start to innovate again. New materials, more sustainable materials, not so much plastic. We make wooden eyewear that is fantastic to wear, and is so comfortable. I think innovation will come back, I know of about twenty companies in the whole industry that I think are any good. They are doing cool, innovative stuff. There will always be a mass market, and the fact that we can't really sell outside of big cities is a shame. We do really well in Harvey Nichols in London but they won't put us in Harvey Nichols Manchester or Leeds because if it doesn't say Gucci, Prada or Burberry, they don't want it. That's the different between the big cities and the sleepier cities, it is about having the confidence to not wear something branded. We don't have any branding on the outside of our glasses, because I am not a billboard and I do not treat my customers like one. If you are wearing a pair of Oliver Goldsmith glasses, people will say ‘great glasses!'. You can choose to tell them what they are, or you can just say ‘thanks'.