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Cubitts opens its sixth store in London's Fitzrovia

Tom Bottomley
02 October 2018

Modern British spectacle brand Cubitts has just opened its latest shop at 44 Charlotte Street in London’s Fitzrovia area.

Following on from the success of ‘The St. James’s Collection’ which was launched with the shop at 68 Jermyn Street in London’s St. James’s area in September 2017, Cubitts is marking the opening with the launch of an exclusive collection of four made-to-measure frames, each inspired by the area’s rich and vibrant history.

The four ‘Fitzrovia Collection’ frames, ‘Charlotte’, ‘Fitzroy’, ‘Rathbone’ and ‘Cleveland’, take their names from the streets of Fitzrovia, while the design inspiration comes from some of the area’s most famous residents.

Fitzrovia gained renown as London’s artistic and bohemian centre around the mid-1920’s, and the store has been designed with that seminal period in mind. Aesthetic cues are taken from the late 1920’s and early 1930’s influences that were flooding from Europe to London, with elegant silhouettes inspired by early European modernism appearing throughout the store.

Colour references include a soft pastel palette synonymous with early Art Deco. An original German globe from 1929 is another nod to the period, when Fitzrovia became such an attraction to Germans that Charlotte Street actually became known as ‘Charlottenstrasse’ for a while.

Founded in 2012 with its first shop in King’s Cross by entrepreneur Tom Broughton, Cubitts has fast built a reputation for creating distinctive, well designed and affordable handmade prescription spectacles and sunglasses for men and women. It’s other London stores are in Soho, Borough and Spitafields.

The new ‘Charlotte’ frame is inspired by Fitzrovia’s most enduring bohemian symbol, Nina Hamnett. Known as both the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ and the ‘Queen of the Fitzroy’, Hamnett spent a considerable amount of time in The Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street, the very same tavern that gave Fitzrovia its name.

The ‘Rathbone’ takes its design cues from the advertising giant Maurice Saatchi, who’s famed as much for his bold choice of spectacles as his media prowess. Saatchi, whose offices once resided in Fitzrovia, claims he decided to make his heavy-rimmed frames a permanent feature after repeatedly being mistaken for Michael Caine by the beautiful women he met.

Downstairs in the new shop is a state-of-the art eye testing room to carry out thorough examinations using advanced equipment, including a Fundus camera which takes a detailed photograph of the back of your eyeballs.

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