Meet Tom Davies, the glasses designer who makes specs for the A-list

T om Davies is standing in the ‘acetate kitchen’ of his factory in Brentford, West London, demonstrating how he makes the frames for his £600 gold-leaf glasses. Standing at the production line, he pours 100 grams of clear acetate chips into a steel mould and sprinkles over a handful of gold leaf. After taking the mould out of the oven he hands me the plate from which the frames will be cut. ‘I got the edible gold leaf from Heston Blumenthal,’ he tells me. ‘I saw it and asked if I could have a pot. It’s not expensive but it’s dramatic.’

Like Blumenthal, Davies is a huge fan of the precious metal. He has even created a pair of £10,000 18ct gold frames. ‘It’s like King Midas touched a pair of glasses and the whole thing turned to gold,’ he says. ‘I sold a pair over Christmas. This lady said to me, “Why should I buy those?” And I replied, “Happy Christmas me.” So she bought them.’ He also has a gold business card. ‘I gave it to Stephen Fry, and he said, “Damn it. I’ve just given up cocaine. It would have been very useful”,’ he says, laughing.

At 50, Davies is rapidly becoming the King of Specs: he has a host of celebrity clients including Victoria Beckham and Ed Sheeran, and is Hollywood’s go-to glasses maker. He made all the frames for Cruella, starring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson, also designing for Winona Ryder in the Beetlejuice sequel and Angelina Jolie in the Maria Callas biopic. He is very much the Willy Wonka of eyewear, a ‘mad professor’ who makes glasses out of crushed meteorites and wears his own designs despite having 20:20 vision. ‘I once bought a meteorite that hit Mars 3,000 years ago,’ he says. ‘I crushed it down into powder and made a pair of sunglasses, which I auctioned off for £3,000 on behalf of the eye charity Orbis.’

Davies had no idea that he would end up as an eyewear designer when he was growing up in Derbyshire. After graduating from the University of East Anglia in 1996 with a degree in art and design, he flew out to Hong Kong with £200 in his pocket and applied for a variety of jobs. He landed on his feet when a clockmaker, who wanted to branch out into eyewear, hired him to design glasses. ‘I had to learn fast,’ he admits.

‘I started by buying Vogue and drew glasses on the model on the front cover. Then I asked customers at the bar where I had worked what sort of glasses they wanted and designed frames for them.’

Four years later he returned to Britain, setting up his eponymous company in 2002. He now has four stores in the heart of London equipped with hospital-grade technology and has recently launched state-of-the-art dry-eye clinics.

Davies lives in Southwest London with his wife Kirsten, 47, who works for data analytics company Lexis Nexis, and their children Oscar, 18, and Amelia, 15. ‘We met at the Hippodrome on my 26th birthday,’ he says. ‘I remember seeing her blonde hair in a sea of men swarming round her and I walked up to her and said, “Ooh, get off my girlfriend.” So cheesy but it worked.’

His first celebrity client was Sir Richard Branson. ‘I remember flying with Virgin and the lady behind the check-in desk was wearing really badly fitting glasses. I was chatting to her because I was a nervous flyer and said to her, “Come and see me and I’ll make you a new pair.” I wasn’t trying to get an upgrade, but she moved me from economy to upper class. I later designed a pair of glasses to thank Sir Richard. I got his head measurements at Madame Tussauds by climbing under the ropes and measuring his waxwork.’

His movie break came when the costume designer for Rowan Atkinson’s 2005 film Keeping Mum went into Harrods opticians, which sold his range, looking for a pair of glasses for its star. He made Atkinson a bespoke pair and Hollywood soon came knocking. Since then he has designed frames for A-listers including Angelina Jolie in The Tourist, Henry Cavill in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Brad Pitt in Allied and Tom Holland in Spiderman: Homecoming.

‘I remember driving to Derby and getting a call from the prop master saying, “I’m on set with Angelina Jolie. She doesn’t like the Ferragamo glasses we’ve chosen. She likes your sunglasses. I need them on set in Venice in four days.” I almost did a handbrake turn on the M1.’

He even lent his own glasses to actor Andrew Leung, who played Emma Thompson’s assistant Jeffrey in Cruella. The celebrated costume designer Jenny Beavan told him Jeffrey was described in the script as the ‘Best Dressed Man in London’. ‘I asked her, “How long have I got?” And she said, “We’re filming this afternoon.” So I gave him my own glasses. Afterwards I saw a picture of him and thought, “Damn, he looks better in my own glasses than I do.”’

One of Davies’s most bizarre encounters was with the late Carrie Fisher. ‘My store manager rang me up and said, “Tom, Carrie Fisher is in the shop.” It was like one of those cartoons where there’s a puff of smoke and the phone’s still hanging in the air. Within five minutes of chatting to her, she declared me Mr Fisher, which I later discovered was an honour bestowed on very few.’ She took him with her to the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it was the start of a close friendship that even had the actress proposition him. ‘I said, “Carrie, I’m a married man,” and she said, “What the f*** has that got to do with it?”’

Heston Blumenthal is another loyal fan. ‘I once swapped a pair of sunglasses with him for a microwave oven,’ says Davies. ‘We’d had a bit too much to drink and I found myself hailing a taxi at 1am lugging a prototype of his advanced culinary microwave down Barnes High Street.’

Meanwhile, Ed Sheeran found him on Google. ‘When Ed got his first five pairs of horn glasses, I asked my assistant to meet me at his house and bring my special tools. She was so excited she forgot my frame heater, which I use to adjust my horn frame, so I asked Ed for his wife’s hair straighteners, as a hairdryer is not hot enough.

‘The frames began to burn so I cut up a pair of Ed’s old socks to protect them. That didn’t work with all the frames – for the others I said, “I need cooking oil and Marigolds.” I put the gloves on to avoid burning my hands, heated up all the oil we could find in the house and gently dipped the frames in to heat them up – so I could adjust them – while listening to Ed’s new album.’

Afterwards, Sheeran asked Davies to sign the wall in his studio. ‘I signed next to Damien Hirst, who had sketched a shark next to his name. Obviously, I had to draw a pair of specs next to mine.’