|
Humble beginnings - Fashion Tints in 1977
|
Rob and Sue Conens opened Fashion Tints in the spring of 1977 with one hundred dollars and a desire to realize a new niche in optical - creating the lens styles that would rule the post-disco eyewear landscape through the delirious decade of the 80's. Eventually demand for the intricate, opulent lens treatments like double-gradient tints, hand-ground facets, engravings, and inlays took off hard and led to them incorporating the business in 1983 and changing the name to Cascade Optical. At the same time they moved the lab from their limited basement space to the location on Forest Hills Avenue (now Marco's restaurant). From here Cascade Optical quickly grew into the go-to operation for specialty lens work for the entire country. Almost any pair of funky vintage 80's glasses you might find on Etsy or eBay likely came from our place.
Like the fate of most bold fashion trends however, the outlandish styles of the "Decade of Greed", the time of Dallas and Dynasty, gave way to the smaller, streamlined, stainless-steel preppyness of the 90's. The niche of rhinestones, facets, and engravings evaporated. Fortunately, we had already been moving forward with the idea of a retail optical shop, which dovetailed perfectly with the rise of a number of unique eyewear designers just finding their feet. Until the 90's, eyeglass frames themselves were generally dull, leaving the (admittedly huge) lenses of the time as the space to get creative. With lens sizes shrinking, the demand for unique frames rose, and the brands filling this new design space were those such as Alain Mikli, Frederic Beausoleil, Theo, Anne et Valentin, BADA, Matsuda, Lindberg, Kata, Clayton Franklin, and more - none of which were available in West Michigan. We sensed a need and this exclusive niche wound up being a brilliant match both for our high-touch design/craft history as well as for the creative people of West Michigan.
High-end, exclusive retail and opticianry has been our focus since 1993. In this time we've put together what we feel is the greatest assembly of independent eyewear lines available in the world. On top of this, we've preserved the old-school opticians' abilities of fitting, repair, personalization, and customizing that almost no other shop has kept. We thrive on expert craft, creativity and service - not on marketing exercises and slavish trendiness, making most of our clientele the contrarian sort - which is the best sort... Individuals and strong characters; welcome to our place!
Like the fate of most bold fashion trends however, the outlandish styles of the "Decade of Greed", the time of Dallas and Dynasty, gave way to the smaller, streamlined, stainless-steel preppyness of the 90's. The niche of rhinestones, facets, and engravings evaporated. Fortunately, we had already been moving forward with the idea of a retail optical shop, which dovetailed perfectly with the rise of a number of unique eyewear designers just finding their feet. Until the 90's, eyeglass frames themselves were generally dull, leaving the (admittedly huge) lenses of the time as the space to get creative. With lens sizes shrinking, the demand for unique frames rose, and the brands filling this new design space were those such as Alain Mikli, Frederic Beausoleil, Theo, Anne et Valentin, BADA, Matsuda, Lindberg, Kata, Clayton Franklin, and more - none of which were available in West Michigan. We sensed a need and this exclusive niche wound up being a brilliant match both for our high-touch design/craft history as well as for the creative people of West Michigan.
High-end, exclusive retail and opticianry has been our focus since 1993. In this time we've put together what we feel is the greatest assembly of independent eyewear lines available in the world. On top of this, we've preserved the old-school opticians' abilities of fitting, repair, personalization, and customizing that almost no other shop has kept. We thrive on expert craft, creativity and service - not on marketing exercises and slavish trendiness, making most of our clientele the contrarian sort - which is the best sort... Individuals and strong characters; welcome to our place!
