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MILAN — One can trust Fabio Attanasio for good style advice, including what eyewear is both timeless and trending.
A menswear and tailoring enthusiasts, Attanasio first opened a blog-turned-social-media page in 2012, The Bespoke Dudes, to offer his “Italian and unconventional point of view about style and menswear,” as the website reads.
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Traveling the world to discover the sartorial traditions of disparate and far-flung locations — from Palermo and Milan to Bangkok, Dubai, London and New York — and sharing tales of those trips online and in books, including the most recent “Gentleman’s Life” published in 2024, garnered him a large community, which now counts 578,000 followers on Instagram alone.
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In 2015 he debuted TBD Eyewear aiming to channel his penchant for artisanal fashion and storytelling into products of his own. Ten years in, the brand is ready to scale up its international footprint with its first participation at the Vision Expo East trade show, which starts Wednesday in Orlando, Fla.
“The first order back in 2015 was of just 21 sunglasses and in 2024 we hit the 12,000-unit milestone,” Attanasio said speaking ahead of his trip Stateside. “It’s been quite a journey since first traveling to Cadore [the Italian eyewear manufacturing hub in the Veneto region] looking for artisans who could translate our vision of vintage-nodding eyewear, in sync with the handmade tradition of that hub’s production,” he said.
The brand’s name, TBD Eyewear, is both the acronym for The Bespoke Dudes, the blog and a pun on “to be determined,” signaling Attanasio’s open-minded and novice approach to the category.
A few years after the launch, the brand started homing in on sustainability, debuting bio acetate frames in early 2020. “It was just us and Stella McCartney,” Attanasio offered. “Then the COVID-19 pandemic fueled the trend and today one can hardly sell non-sustainable eyewear,” he opined.
In addition to resorting to sustainable acetate, TBD Eyewear also introduced bio-based lenses containing 40 percent less nylon than regular ones and recycled packaging, rounding off its sustainability pledge.
Hitting the U.S. market at Vision Expo East, the brand is marking its anniversary with a premium range for spring 2025 dubbed “10Y Anniversary Collection.”
TBD Eyewear reworked its signature acetate sunglasses Welt and Cord — the former a round and chunky frame, the latter a squarish design with a graphic bridge — featuring mineral glass lenses, largely substituted by nylon-based alternatives in the industry, that enhance the vintage feel. Inspired by ‘70s and ‘80s styles, both models are defined by visible metallic core temples and gradient lenses in gray and green for the Welt and Cord models, respectively.
Retailing at 235 euros, the two-style collection is limited edition and numbered to just 100 sunglasses between the two models. They come inside an anniversary packaging that can double up as a design trinket box.
“We’re very confident about the outcome of Vision Expo. We generate half of our revenues online and the biggest market on that channel are the U.S., followed by Italy, Germany, the U.K. and France,” Attanasio said. “This is giving us confidence that the bedrock is laid to set up distribution in the country,” he added.
In 2023, the most recent available financial figure, the brand generated 1.1 million in revenues. “Growth in the first 10 years has been bootstrapping. I think that we carved a sweet spot for ourselves: the product is all handmade in Italy, with a reasonable price point,” Attanasio said, adding that the average retail price is 185 euros.
In addition to its proprietary e-commerce site, the brand has about 150 wholesale doors globally, handled directly — as is the case with Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the U.K. — or via distributors and local agents, in Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, South Korea and Japan.
Attanasio acknowledged that the next phase of growth for TBD Eyewear entails expanding its footprint in the optician and specialty store circuit, currently accounting for about half of its doors.
“My start as a content creator in the apparel space naturally drew me toward the fashion and concept stores, especially as we’ve been attending [menswear fair] Pitti Uomo for the past 10 years, but I believe the real game is in the optician space, which can really fuel growth and hit the next phase,” Attanasio said.