Written by The Strategy
We met up with former TS Alum, Hugo Taylor, and his Co-Founder, Charlie Morris, to learn more about what goes into the making of a pair of Taylor Morris Eyewear. The brand launched in 2013, and has since been gracing the faces of Kourtney Kardashian, Poppy Delevigne and Rita Ora, to know name a few.
How does a pair of Taylor Morris Sunglasses go from an idea to a physical product?
It all starts with a mood board. That to us is the most important stage. For example, on this collection, we looked back to our roots, which were all about stage and screen icons; Princess Grace of Monaco, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, John Dillinger. We’ll find the coolest pictures of them wearing the shades we like, and that will go on the mood board. After that, our ideas go into a CAD – A Computer Automated Design.
The CAD is the technical sketch of the sunglasses. It has all the sizing details of the design. Once we’re happy with this rough sketch, you get a technical drawing.
A technical drawing is what the sunglasses get made from. These have all the minute details of the design. After that, you’ll get your first sample.
Each sample could take up to a month to create. The longer we spend doing it, the happier we are with the end result.
Once we are satisfied with the sample, we have our pair of sunglasses.
What made you both start Taylor Morris?
We’ve always really loved sunglasses. Charlie and I used to run a very famous nightclub together. We’d start work midday and finish at 5am, 3 or 4 days a week. After a year, that really takes a toll on your face, so we would sit there wearing sunglasses in the office whilst working. Then we noticed, “Wow you’ve got a lot of sunglasses, and I’ve got a lot of sunglasses.” We were spending most of our pay checks on sunglasses. We finally went on holiday together and lost our very expensive sunglasses. The next day, at lunch, we thought, why don’t we start our own sunglass company. We wanted to create something with the same quality, look and style of the high end brands at a more accessible price point.
What inspires the Taylor Morris brand?
We’ve got our professional early 30s to mid-30s men, early 20s to late 20s girls, and the creative class. Those are our 3 types of customers. What we really like to do is think about our friends and what they would wear. Once we’ve done our mood board, inspired by stage and screen icons, we work out who do we know that’s going to want to wear this. We fit the personality to a pair of shades. But then, we also sometimes just pick pieces because we like it.
