Shady Ladies

In the land of sunglasses, they're the queens

OH, L. A.! Land of sunshine, land of starshine! Famous faces peek out from behind dark glasses and proclaim that, in the sunshine capital of the world, La. Eyeworks is king.

"It doesn't make any difference what you're wearing from the neck down," says Barbara McReynolds, "this has to be right," and she gestures to her smart two-tone specs. "If this is right, you can wear a T-shirt and jeans and pull it off. You see what we mean?"

Six years ago, she and her two partners, Gai Gherardi and Margo Willits, opened their whitewalled art gallery for eyeglasses on Melrose Avenue, called La. Eyeworks. Their fifties-inspired frames perfectly matched the New Wave spirit of the time, and the glasses flew out of the store on the noses of the movie and record industries. Their success helped inaugurate Melrose as the hot shopping street in L.A.

Hollywood stars and starlets—Shari Belafonte-Harper, Alexander Godunov, Divine, Rob Lowe, Rupert Everett, Peewee Herman, Andy Warhol— pose and posture in image-conscious magazine ads that proclaim the La. Eyeworks credo to

the nation: "A face is like a work of art. It deserves a great frame.' ' These women love eyeglasses. To them, it is art and they know what they like. No Tootsie oversize frames for them: "Like wearing a Mack truck on your face," says Gai. And no initials: "No Pucci, Cucci, or Margucci."

"Traditional shapes," she explains, "but brought up to the present by the materials and surfaces." Initially, they sold an-

"You couldn't get anything good to eat in the neighborhood," Margo explains. So they took over the shop next door and opened a cafe. Now they've opened a larger restaurant, City, on La Brea Avenue—La Brea is already being hailed as the next Melrose. And they're planning another cafe for West L. A. tique frames from the fifties and stock items that they'd alter— sandblasting the frames, dyeing them, painting them. As the fifties revival has faded, and Melrose has inevitably become glutted with fast-fashion boutiques and gelato parlors, the three women have stayed on the ball. Today they design and manufacture 85 percent of the store's inventory. The rest is trendsetting imports. A two-year-old wholesale business ships their sunglasses to specialty shops throughout the country, and they are planning a New York store. But at the moment almost all their energy is devoted to their second career.

"We're just crazy enough to do anything, yet we're sensible enough to do it in the best way we know how." That's how Margo explains their success. "You get on a roll and you keep going!"

Kurt Kilgus