From Sketch to Face — How a TARIAN Frame Is Made
It starts with a slab of acetate.
Not a mood board. Not a trend report. A physical material, chosen for its colour and depth, held in the hand, held up to the light. At TARIAN, the creative process behind every piece of Paris eyewear begins with the material — because the material determines what the frame can become before anything else is decided.
Almost half of the acetates used by TARIAN are developed exclusively for the brand. Their colours, transparencies and depths do not exist elsewhere. This is the first constraint — and the first creative decision. It is also what distinguishes genuine luxury glasses from objects that merely look like them.
The drawing
Jérémy Miklitarian works in an atelier at 50 rue des Tournelles, in the Marais, in a 17th-century building a few minutes from the Place des Vosges. He has worked here since 2011. This is where TARIAN's identity as an independent eyewear brand was built — frame by frame, drawing by drawing.
Every frame begins as a drawing, made by hand. The drawing determines the shape, the proportions, the volume. It is not a technical document. It is a hypothesis — about how a form might sit on a face, how it might move with light, how it might age.
« I always start with the materials and the colour palette before moving to the design. »
The prototype
The drawing becomes a prototype. The prototype is tested, adjusted, refined. This stage can take several months. The acetate must be cut, shaped, polished — each step by hand, each step revealing whether the original hypothesis holds.
Some proportions that look right on paper feel wrong on a face. Some colours that seem obvious in isolation become difficult next to skin. The prototype is where these corrections happen — before anything is committed to production. This iterative precision is what separates handmade glasses from industrially produced eyewear.
The production — Veneto, Italy
TARIAN frames are made in the Veneto region of Italy, by artisans who have worked acetate for generations. Between the first prototype and the finished frame arriving at the Paris atelier, six to twelve months pass. The material requires time to cure. The process cannot be abbreviated.
Each frame is sculpted, not moulded. Polished, not coated. The AXIS flex hinge — screwless, designed to follow the shape of the face and absorb its movements — is fitted by hand. Weight is distributed across the entire frame. Nothing forces. Nothing pinches. This level of finish is what defines premium optical frames — and what makes them worth the investment.
500 numbered pieces
Each TARIAN model is produced in a controlled run of 500 pieces. Each one is individually numbered. This is not a gesture toward exclusivity. It is the natural consequence of the process: when luxury sunglasses and optical frames are made by hand, from materials that take time, by artisans whose expertise cannot be scaled without losing something, the number is simply what it is.
500 pieces. Each one numbered. The numbering is not a marketing device — it is the record of a way of working that places craft above volume.
The frame on the face
The frame that arrives is not the drawing. It is what the drawing became after passing through material, through hands, through time. It sits on the face and, if the work has been done well, disappears there — present without announcing itself, noticed when it is absent.
This is what the process is for. And this is what designer glasses from an independent French eyewear house should feel like.
