Attanasio began with no expectations of how his vision would be received (“I tend to have low expectations in
general,” he laughs. “Be ambitious, but have low expectations - that way whatever comes out, it’s always good!”),
however, the business rapidly found an audience. “When we started the brand, it was more of an experiment at the
beginning, but we felt like we could actually make it work after seeing that shops were coming to us without me even
picking up the phone. Maybe they knew me, or the blog or Andrea [Viganò, Attanasio’s business partner]. They
believed in the product before even seeing the glasses, just because they knew of us. And then they kept on buying
it of course!”
The Bespoke Dudes Eyewear’s aesthetic draws heavily on classic styles from the mid-20th century, both in its acetate
and metallic lines. “The ideas behind the eyewear are very consistent with the concepts behind The Bespoke Dudes
[blog],” Attanasio tells me. “Classic elegance, timeless style. We don’t want our glasses to be fashionable; we want
to be the ideal choice for a man from, say, 25 years to 50 or 60. A man who appreciates craftsmanship, who doesn’t
go for the logo anymore, but looks instead for quality. We generally don’t get people who post photos in their
yellow Lamborghini or Ferrari, trying to show off. They tend to be people who enjoy a good lifestyle, but a subtle
lifestyle.”
Maintaining a level of quality and craft that could be comparable to that of the tailoring Attanasio so fastidiously
dissects on his blog was paramount to building the brand. “We say that our glasses are handmade, because a lot of
artisanal production is employed in their construction. Our producer for acetate, for example, still mounts the
hinges of the glasses by hand. There is no machine that glues the hinges in the frame and the temple, someone
literally does all of those assembly processes by hand.” The majority of the production occurs in the north-east of
Italy, near Belluno, a traditional hub for eyewear manufacturing. The brand has allowed Attanasio to support many of
the smaller family makers in the area, many of whom have been feeling the squeeze as large multinational businesses
have come to dominate the market. “This work offers an opportunity to survive for these small workshops and artisans
that produce very small amounts of product per year,” Attanasio tells me. “To give you an idea, our acetate supplier
produces in a year what Luxottica produces in just one day. We’re not like other big empires - we relate to family
businesses, so they’re the first to want to give us the best product that they can in order to build a relationship
with us so that we can keep working with and supporting them. That’s really satisfying to me.”
The shift to becoming a producer of product himself hasn’t dulled Attanasio’s
enthusiasm, however. “I’m a curious
person,” he says. “When you become an insider in the industry you get to know a lot of new things, a lot of
curiosities and details that as a customer you might not get the chance to learn. I like the relationships that you
build with suppliers.”In the years since its inception, The Bespoke Dudes
Eyewear has become a fixture at both menswear and eyewear trade fairs, and is now carried by over 40 retailers,
includingThe Rake.“Iit sounds like a joke,” laughs Attanasio, “but when Wei Koh came up
to our booth at Pitti and asked about selling our glasses onThe
Rake, I must say, as a long time reader myself, I was very happy". With
further growth planned for the brand and entrances into several new markets on the horizon, it’s a trajectory that
shows no signs of slowing. Attanasio, predictably, credits that growth and that success to the thing he’s always
championed - quality. “Just like a suit is made by a tailor in a workshop, our glasses are made by an artisan,” says
Attanasio. “The concept is the same.”
www.thebespokedudes.com
