LONDON — Slip on a pair of newly relaunched Renaulds, and catch a glimpse of the past — and the future.
Launched in the 1960s, the American sunglasses brand became synonymous with Hollywood cool, on and off-screen. Renaulds were worn (and later crushed underfoot) in “The Italian Job,” and also appeared in the opening scene of “Sweet Charity,” shading the eyes of actress Shirley MacLaine’s shady boyfriend.
Steve McQueen wore them during the production of his 1971 film “Le Mans,” while other stars sported them in their downtime. Elvis had a pair, and so did Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Warren Beaty and Jackie Onassis.
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In those days, Renaulds were hard to miss, with their distinctive wraparound shape, metal frames and colored lenses. They were statement-making with a streamlined, sporty feel.
In an interview, Renauld’s new owner and CEO Gareth Llewelyn said he was hooked the first time he saw “The Italian Job.” As a child, he couldn’t take his eyes off the Lamborghini Miura whipping around the hairpin turns of the Italian alps, or the driver’s gold-framed, wraparound Renauld sunglasses.
Llewelyn, an entrepreneur and inventor with numerous patents to his name, has 150 pairs of vintage Renaulds. He loved the brand so much he purchased it in 2019, and then set about reinventing it with a personal — and technical — twist.
His said his aim was to bring the history of the glasses to life, and add value and traceability in a world plagued by fakes. The result is not only a limited-edition product, but media platform and digital hallmark tokens, both of which are embedded in the temple tips of the glasses.
“We sell stories, we do not sell sunglasses,” said Llewelyn. “My passion is really to reinvent eyewear, and attach emotion to the reason people buy, and wear, sunglasses.”
As part of his storytelling strategy, Llewelyn and his team source authenticated memorabilia from the celebrities’ estates, and encase bits of them in the lens or frame of the glasses. They’re implanted with what the company refers to as the “keepsake marque.”
The McQueen style features an authenticated part of the actor’s Porsche 917 race number 20 embedded in the temple arm of the sunglasses.
In homage to James Dean, Renauld has re-created the actor’s signature round sunglasses, even though they were not originally from the brand. The reimagined designs each contain a sample from Dean’s one-piece, racing pit suit encased in the lens.
The Elvis style, meanwhile, holds shredded bits of the singer’s shirts.
“I wanted an emotional connection to Elvis’s DNA, so when you put the glasses on, you’re pretty much wearing a part of Elvis,” said Llewelyn, adding that he’s patented the technology, meaning that Renauld is the only company that can embed authenticated memorabilia in a pair of sunglasses.
In a bid to enrich the storytelling further, Llewelyn also developed an NFC, or near-field communication chip, that’s embedded in the temple tip of the glasses. With a swipe of a smartphone app, owners can access a media platform and read all about their sunglasses.
There are interviews with historians and members of the celebrities’ estates, as well as films and photographs. Llewelyn added that in the age of fake news, the content also serves as proof that the memorabilia is the real deal.
“One of the things came through on social media was people asking ‘How do we know it’s really Elvis’ shirt?’ Elvis’ estate had given me 15 shirts and thought, how do we actually prove that it’s Elvis’ shirt?
“So I had to come up with an idea, a mechanism by which we could allow someone to actually see us cutting up the shirt, and putting it in the lens of the sunglasses,” he said. So he filmed the process, and added the content to the NFC chip.
He’s always creating content, and is also able to upload it in real time. Going forward, Llewelyn said he wants to introduce relevant, user-generated stories and, potentially, news and feature stories related to Renauld to the content platform.
“The content and advertising possibilities are endless, and the user-generated content aspect, I believe, will be huge,” he said.
Llewelyn has recently returned from New York, where the photographer Jimmy King shot Antoni Porowski of “Queer Eye” and the new Netflix travel series “No Taste Like Home,” in James Dean’s former Manhattan apartment.
King was David Bowie’s personal photographer and stylist, and came out of retirement for the shoot, which took place at the apartment on 98th Street. Owners of the Renauld James Dean glasses will be the first to view the full body of work.
Creating the film that showed the shredding of the Elvis shirts was not Llewelyn’s first brush with the challenges of authentication. Llewelyn is also the inventor of ValueBond, a digital hallmark and the first asset-backed product verification token.
ValueBond allows companies to offer digitized passports for their products, and prove their authenticity and provenance. It also serves as a resale platform.
Similar to the NFC chip that contains the content platform, ValueBond is encased in the temple tip of the glasses. It means that all information about value and provenance can be accessed by swiping the ValueBond app over the chip.
Llewelyn said the art, photography, luxury drinks, and classic cars industries all work with ValueBond. Fashion, he added, isn’t currently using ValueBond, although he thinks that high-end brands could benefit from the information-packed security token.
“The luxury market is ripe for this. It will be critical to all fashion in the near future, and we are just starting down this road. Not only do we authenticate, but we also provide provenance, so you know who the previous owners were and you can buy and sell with confidence. It shuts off fakes, and it shuts down counterfeiting,” he argued.
Even with the tech, the glasses aren’t much more expensive than some designer styles, and range in price from $700 to $1,800. They sell on the Renauld site, and through a handful of specialist optical stores in the U.K and the U.S.
Renauld currently produces 10 styles and sells up to 3,000 pairs per year. They are manufactured as limited-edition collections at factories in Italy’s Veneto region.
The celebrity crowd has slowly begun to rediscover them by word-of-mouth, or via their stylists.
Brad Pitt wore a pair on the cover of the September issue of GQ, while Kendall Jenner sported them in a shoot for Vogue China. Dolly Parton wore a pair of Renauld Sixty-One sunglasses, with 24-karat yellow gold plating with sky blue lenses, for a party in 2022.
They are the latest in a long line of celebrities who’ve fallen for the frames, which were the brainchild of William Rowley, owner of Sea & Ski, which made suntan lotion.
Rowley tapped a designer in San Francisco to create the sunglasses, which all had arresting shapes and colors. There was the Bikini, a figure-8 metal shape with dark lenses, and the Parisienne, with its white frames and myriad lens colors ranging from “Renoir Rose” to “Picasso Blue.”
At the time, Renauld also touted its “Orama IV” lenses, describing them in ad campaigns as “shatterproof, glare-free, featherlight and able to block UV rays.”
TWA was a customer, ordering the performance glasses for its pilots, flight engineers and navigators. Between 1961 and 1981 the company sold around 15 million pairs, before it eventually shut.
Later this year, Llewelyn and his team will delve into that history with plans to open pop-up galleries in Palm Springs, New York, Dubai, Sydney and London. The galleries, he said, will be used to “recount the art and history of Renauld” — and give viewers the chance to travel back and forth in time.