Barton Perreira: An Eye For Everything
For more than 30 years, this designer has been turning what she sees — in architecture, jewelry, even a drinking glass — into some of eyewear’s most celebrated designs.
Patty Perreira sees eyewear everywhere. In jewelry. In architecture. In the grille of a car and the lines of a motorcycle engine. In a sunset that fades into the ocean. Walking down Abbot Kinney one day, she spotted a glass tumbler that faded from teal blue to brown. Most people would have seen a pretty drinking glass. Perreira saw a lens. “I took a photo, turned it upside down and sent it to the lens manufacturer,” she said. “I see eyewear in everything. It’s almost like it finds me.”
Spend enough time with Perreira and you realize this isn’t a tidy line about her process — it’s just how she’s wired. She can’t look at anything without seeing what it could become.
After almost 40 years of an impressive career in eyewear, inspired by shapes, forms, and colors, and brought to life through thousands of sketches and prototypes while building Barton Perreira, you might think the ideas would eventually start to thin out. Perreira sometimes wonders about that too.