Eyeballs Eyewear in Paddington is a Sydney stockist of Mykita glasses and sunglasses, and we hold the stainless steel, acetate and 3D-printed Mylon collections in store. You can try any of them on — 342 Oxford Street, about ten minutes from the Sydney CBD, open seven days.
Berlin, and a hinge with no screws
Mykita makes eyewear the way a good industrial design studio would: solve the hinge first, then draw the frame. The house was founded in Berlin in 2003 and it still designs, prototypes and assembles in its own workshop there rather than farming the work out, which is unusual for a brand of its size.
Its signature is a spring hinge cut from a single sheet of stainless steel. No screws, no soldering, no separate parts glued into a temple — the whole mechanism is folded out of the same piece of metal you are holding, and it is left visible because seeing how it works is the point. Practically, there is no screw to back out and nothing to seize up, and the temple tension stays where it was set.
The steel itself is thin to the edge of implausibility. A Lite frame weighs almost nothing on the nose and still holds its shape, because the strength is in the geometry rather than the mass. Decades puts the same construction into more classic shapes with adjustable nose pads, and Lessrim strips the frame back to a rim-free front where the lens does the structural work.
Mylon — a material you cannot make any other way
Alongside the steel there is Mylon, a 3D-printed polyamide Mykita developed itself and finishes by hand in Berlin. It is matte, light, faintly soft to the touch, and it is built up in layers rather than milled from a block, which means the house can draw shapes and wall thicknesses that no acetate sheet or metal press would hold. Pantara is the best known of them and the one people arrive asking for.
Because it is printed, Mylon comes in matte finishes rather than gloss — blacks, greys, sand and clay tones — and it takes a knock without the bright scuff you get on polished acetate. It is also the answer for anyone who wants a sculptural, substantial-looking frame without the weight that usually comes with one.
The acetate collection sits between the two: proper Italian sheet acetate, cut simply, with the same screwless hinge running through it. Meryl comes from that side of the range.
What we hold in Paddington
We carry the main Mykita collections and keep a working spread of the steel, the acetate and the Mylon rather than only the quiet colours:
- Stainless steel Lite and Decades frames, optical and sun
- The 3D-printed Mylon range, including Pantara
- The acetate collection, including Meryl in the sun models
- Rimless Lessrim and the numbered Studio frames
- Collaboration pieces, such as the Maison Margiela line, as they are released
Every frame here can be fitted with your prescription, sunglasses included, and lenses are edged in store rather than sent away. On a rimless or a very thin steel front that matters — the lens has to be cut to the frame within a fraction of a millimetre or the whole thing sits crooked.
How Mykita fits, and who it suits
Mykita suits people who want a frame that is visibly designed rather than decorated. There is no logo doing the talking, no applied trim, and nothing on the frame that is not holding it together — which is exactly why it reads as quiet in an office and as considered everywhere else.
On the face, the steel collections are the most forgiving: light, adjustable at the pads, and easy to sit on a low or a narrow bridge. Mylon is wider and more present, so it wants a bit of face to sit on and rewards a stronger brow; if you have been told frames overwhelm you, start with Lite and work up. The acetate sits in the middle.
The honest advice is to put on four or five at once. Mykita is a range that looks severe on the shelf and softens considerably on a face, and the difference between two sizes of the same model is usually the whole decision. Come in, try them, and we will adjust the one you like properly before you leave.
