> Why are they not able to compete on style and fashion?
I am honestly curious if this is primarily a materials, vendor, distribution, design personnel or intellectual property bottleneck.
I am honestly curious if this is primarily a materials, vendor, distribution, design personnel or intellectual property bottleneck.
Mykita founder split from ic berlin (screwless frames). If you look at their designs, there does seem to be IP/patent avoidance. Both are comparably priced. There are supposedly cheap clones available, maybe they can be found on Alibaba.
Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15431180
Edit2: ic berlin patent (expired?): https://www.google.com/patents/US5418581
Also a big fan of Etnia Barcelona -- they're in a similar price bracket (as far as I know they're independent, but I'll admit to not having researched it)
That said, the frames are totally hit or miss, with some of them feeling like they aren't worth the $10-20 or whatever they cost. I find though, its no so much materials as attention to detail. The materials themselves withstand a beating. One of my favorite pairs _rattled_ when I got it because the little plastic nose pieces, and the little plastic piece that fit over the end of the arms was lose. Drop of glue in the ear pieces, and a softer nose piece and they are now my favorite glasses.
OTOH, I also owned a half dozen pairs of ray-bans before I switched to zenni, and probably 3/4 of them had finish problems within the first couple years. The coating on the plastic pieces started to disintegrate leaving a sticky residue on one pair, and three pairs with metal frames had the clear varnish like substance start to crack and peel from the metallic finish. Another started to discolor after a couple years. I guess at least rayban has perfected planned obsolescence...