Let’s start by talking about the dream. Roberto Carlon, optician, Venetian, dreamer, with a certain flair for business and his dream: to create eyewear different from the others, which stood out for its lightness and simplicity.
It was the 1980s and the world of eyewear discovered that eyewear could not be experienced only as a prosthesis necessary for ametropians to see better but had to become an object of fashion and design and – above all – an accessory designed to improve the personal image. The world was filled with colors and exaggerated proportions and the most common interpretation of this trend was to go towards amplification, towards color, towards opulence, especially in the context of Italian and French design. In northern Europe, opposite trends were already born, oriented to the use of innovative materials designed precisely to make eyewear light, transparent, invisible.
This became Roberto Carlon’s dream: eliminating everything that could be eliminated and working by subtraction to create eyewear that is not only light, but also solid, which does not require spare parts and requires very little maintenance. Thus the entrepreneurial intuition led to technical research, perseverance brought a little luck in meeting people who could transmit the competence of the materials and the craftsmanship ability became art, creating the first concepts of Micromega eyewear.
A titanium thread, literally sewn to the lenses, in a totally personalized balance on the wearer’s face.
A unique pair of glasses, which in about 3 grams creates a functional and comfortable frame.
But the optician who is also a craftsman cannot stop at the idea of the artist and the search for beauty. And so once again the dexterity becomes the possibility of creating something new: if the frame is reduced to the minimum possible structure, aesthetics must be sought elsewhere. Lateral thinking comes in handy: where the world puts design in the frame and function in the lenses, Carlon has the intuition to shift the creative part in the cut of the ophthalmic lens. The result is a balance of lightness, comfort, vision and shape: ophthalmic lenses become leaves, stars, suns and moons, to adapt each time to the wearer’s personality and aesthetics.
The next step can be defined as a sort of “balancing act”: slowly the material returns to the glasses, always with the use of light and natural materials such as wood or horn, to build light asymmetrical scaffolding that rediscovers one’s own balance in their connection with the lenses.
A perfect synthesis of form and function, which combines creativity and lightness, customization and technology in vision solutions that become, worn, true works of art that complement and complete the faces on which they are worn.
The heart of all this continues to live in a workshop that encloses its pulsating part in a laboratory in the heart of Venice whose entrance corridor is more reminiscent of an artist’s gallery than the cave of a craftsman. Around a work table, the process has been repeated for years in the expert hands of Roberto, Anna, Giulio and their collaborators. The idea that is born in the shop, together with the customer and studying his face and his taste is realized through the creative cutting of the lenses, carried out on site, respecting the centering parameters necessary for a perfect vision and then moving on to the construction of the frame: the gold or titanium thread is cut to size, folded properly, sewn into the holes of the lenses and integrated with any other parts in wood, horn or polycarbonate for the temples made with the same material as the ophthalmic lenses, which they retain transparency and – on request – the ability to darken in the light.
Once packaged, the glasses are checked instrumentally and on the wearer’s face.
The concept of tailoring that is the basis of our production makes each eyewear unique, personalized and long-lasting.
The integration between frame and lens makes it impossible to distinguish between the parts: the subtraction process that led to the elimination of every superfluous element and possible cause of fragility of the project, made it possible for every residual element (temples, bridge and lenses) to become an integral part. of design.
Therefore, a Micromega frame cannot exist without its lenses and their “special” cut.
And this alchemy was created thanks to the set of worlds that animated the dream of the founder of our company: without his entrepreneurial soul he would not have sought the dream, without his intellectual curiosity he would not have sought the material, without his training as an optician would not have had the sensitivity to seek perfection in the visual solution, without his artist nature he would not have been able to search for a unique design solution, without his craftsmanship he would not have been able to create and put it all together, but above all without his humanist philosophy he could not have sought the uniqueness of each single eyewear.