Black Eyewear
Black Eyewear is the creation of optician and life
long jazz devotee, Robert Roope. Robert Roope
will never forget the night he met Count Basie. It
was the late ’60s and Roope was living in
Copenhagen. He was a regular at the world
renowned jazz club Jazzhus Montmartre. “I would
wait until about 2am, by which time everyone
was drunk enough not to mind me playing the
piano,” remembers Roope. This particular night,
someone sat down beside him and joined in the
piano playing. Roope was about to turn round
and ask them to stop when he saw that it was the
iconic jazz bandleader. Roope got up to go, but
Basie motioned him to stay, and they played a
duet. “That was one of the most amazing nights
of my life,” says Roope. It’s also part of the reason
why Roope decided to dedicate the various
designs in his Black Eyewear range of glasses and
sunglasses to jazz musicians — as well as Basie,
there are frames dedicated to Thelonious Monk,
Chet Baker and John Coltrane. “It was my way of
paying tribute to the music that has given me so
much joy over the years,” says Roope. Having
spent 50 years working as an optician, Robert
moved into designing his own eyewear in 2006.
His passion for eyewear design was born out of a
wish to rescue the bold, iconic eyewear styles of
the 50s and put modern design back on the map.
With collaborations with jewellery designer Scott
Wilson, clothing label Solace London, designer
Nicomede Talavera and Selfridges under his belt,
Roope’s Black Eyewear is synonymous with a bold
new mood in eyewear design.
Text: Blackeyewear
blackeyewear.com
Sleeves Magazine