Take a squiz at Peter Coombs’ designer eyewear
HE can make you look smarter, slimmer and more stylish. Adelaide-based eyewear designer Peter Coombs turns his finely tuned eye to the creation of spectacles that flatter your face.
ADELAIDE-based eyewear designer Peter Coombs creates spectacles that flatter your face.
“The interesting thing with frames is they are an optical illusion,” says Coombs. “I can identify what will look good on somebody – much like a fashion atelier does. I can fit a frame to just about anyone.”
Thirty years ago, and straight out of college, Coombs set off to the US on a mission to make his fledgling spectacle design practice a success.
“I got on a plane and went to Hollywood … and within a couple of weeks I was talking to the co-owner of L.A. Eyeworks. I mentioned that I’d like to get my frames on someone like Miles Davis and she smiled at me in a strange sort of way. About a week later, she invited me back and Miles was there – she’d already sold the frames to him.”
Davis was quickly followed by glasses-addict Elton John who, true to form, couldn’t stop at one and now owns 25 pairs of Peter Coombs’ specs.
Fifty-one-year-old Coombs studied engineering and metal-smithing in the 1980s, before digital technology transformed the making of spectacle frames.
“(Making frames by hand) has given me a lot of insight into the possibilities of materials. I’ve beaten precious metals and titanium to the point of it breaking, so I’ve got a clear understanding of what is and isn’t possible. The moving form of a frame is beautiful in itself – so that’s been the lifelong goal, to bring beauty to something like that.”
And customers, he says, “love the fact that they can talk to the guy who’s got the slightly gnarled and dirty fingers from making frames”.
This celebration of materials, craft and beauty in design makes Coombs a natural fit as the head of the Design Institute of Australia’s SA branch, where he aims to “inspire and excite other designers”.
“We’ve got a really strong design base here,” he says. “It’s a really good thing. There’s some beautiful stuff happening here in Adelaide.”
Peter Coombs Eyewear appears at Adelaide Fashion Festival South Oz Designer Market, Victoria Square, city, October 21-22