Steinem’s distinctive look stays with him, he says, “because it doesn’t feel forced – it’s not disingenuous” (the activist once sent Levy a note that read “Thank you for thinking of me”). “Gloria Steinem, Elvis Presley and Paul Newman are always in and around my brain,” says Levy. Ultimately, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was unexpectedly fond of chunky frames, and David Hockney are the dominant influences in the final products – yet plenty of others lurk near the surface. The designer brought along core references that had inspired his collections thus far, and “it’s funny”, he says, “because there just happened to be a lot of eyewear in the images already.” For Stokey-Daley, who is growing his own business slowly, this is his first foray beyond ready-to-wear. The creation of the frames was blissfully easy. SS Daley upcycled-silk James pyjama shirt, £500 © Joshua Tarn Steven Stokey-Daley wears DL Eyewear x SS Daley Cloudsley in Khaki, $200. Each frame has “See With Love” inscribed on it, and annually DL Eyewear donates a percentage of profits to LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation), which offers financial relief to small businesses in historically under-served communities. “It’s a big way of stepping outside of myself, because I do tend to love a nice heavy frame.” When DL Eyewear first launched, the price point was accessible for his MTV-era fans and the frames were unisex, “because I think it would be such a strange way to limit how people express themselves”. “I feel like around 2006 or 2007, the larger the glasses you were wearing, the cooler it was – and now, in retrospect, I’m unclear…” It became so part of his identity that when he came to play David in Schitt’s Creek, he chose not to wear glasses, to give some distance. And by the time he came to fame as a host on MTV Canada, his frames had become a trademark. And the fact that my parents put me in them and sent me off to school and thought, ‘We’re doing the best for our kid’, is really frightening.” He resorted to buying sunglasses and putting his own prescription lens in. He too remembers his very first pair with mixed emotions: “They were this gigantic, black-wire sort of… I don’t know what they were. Glasses are as much a part of Levy’s brand as they are Stokey-Daley’s – maybe more so. Malone Souliers Jean shoes,£425 © Joshua Tarn SS Daley cotton Archie jacket, £763,, and corduroy Jacob trousers, £500. Levy wears DL Eyewear x SS Daley Cloudsley in Khaki, $200. SS Daley wool and cotton-mix Wroe suit jacket, £1,200, and matching trousers, £700. “I was in a fitting for my AW22 collection,” says Stokey-Daley, “and I said to Harry, ‘Can you find me some vintage glasses?’ We found nothing good at all.” This was especially vexing for the designer, for whom glasses are intrinsic to his vision: “I draw every look with glasses – I just always have.” Stokey-Daley wears DL Eywear x SS Daley Cloudsley Optical, $200. Levy – an avid fashion fan, spotted several times on Loewe’s front row – and Stokey-Daley had already sent each other appreciative messages on Instagram when a mutual friend, the stylist Harry Lambert, suggested they work together. The Cloudsley, the Lonsdale and the Charlton (named after the north London squares near where Stokey-Daley lives) are classic, accessible and a little bit eccentric – not unlike their genial creators. Together they have produced three different pairs of glasses, a collaboration between Stokey-Daley’s clothing brand SS Daley, much admired since it launched in 2020 for its take on English romance, and Levy’s DL Eyewear, founded in 2013. Stokey-Daley and Levy have convened today in London not for a counselling session but a celebration. “Why does it always start with a wire frame.?” Dan Levy wears DL Eyewear x SS Daley Charlton in Umber, $200, and SS Daley Caley wool and cotton-mix twill Marlowe suit jacket, £1,300, © Joshua Tarn But I think it forced me to seek beauty elsewhere in a more passionate way.” “I was eight years of age, and they were so awful. His first frames were “really brutal”, with a very 2000s wire. “That was my first pair of glasses – from an Asda optician.” Asda, the quintessential British supermarket chain, is surely a whole world away from Levy’s native Toronto, but he is too sunnily Canadian to dampen the mood. “Yeah?” replies the 39-year-old Levy, shakily. “How do I romanticise them in a fun way?” He turns to Dan Levy, best known for the award-winning Schitt’s Creek, which he wrote, produced and starred in. “It’s not glamorous at all,” grimaces the 25-year-old Liverpudlian designer, winner of both last year’s LVMH Prize for young designers and the British Fashion Council’s Foundation Award. Steven Stokey-Daley reminisces about the first pair of glasses he ever had. Simply sign up to the Style myFT Digest - delivered directly to your inbox.
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