DITA Glasses: The Beginning
Founded by John Juniper and Jeff Solorio in 1995, DITA was started with and continues to maintain an intense focus on fine craftsmanship and unmatched artisan design. Inspired by classic eyewear forms of the 50s and 60s, the brand has carved out not just its own space in the industry, but an era. There is the time before DITA’s focus on titanium framing and unparalleled design mastery, and then there is the time after it – that time being now. Through innovative designs like those found in the brand’s Flight series, Supa Dupa frames, or the legendary collection of Grandmasters, DITA stays true to its core values, proving that limited quantity leads to unlimited quality. DITA glasses started off beautiful and then got even better.
After the brand’s first men’s line of sunglasses dropped in 1999, DITA finally started to get national recognition when celebs started to get spotted wearing the frames. As recognition grew, the company focused its efforts on maximizing the quality of its lines by establishing long-term relationships with Japanese artisans, who continue to uphold the highest production standards to this very day. Through these efforts, DITA has been able to maintain an identity forever-connected with the highest production standards and a sense of tradition only matched by the oldest and most respected of the European luxury brands. Through a mixture of exclusive drops and celebrity endorsements, the brand has been able to grow steadily, and even collaborate with other companies to grow the DITA name even more.
The Collabs
Once the brand started to combine its efforts with the finest artists and creators of the time, the ceiling for DITA became a thing of the past. Beginning with the DITA X Undercover collab of 2004, the brand established itself as not only a brand conscious of the eyewear space it inhabited, but conscious of itself as an active participant in the artistic side of the industry. This ability to cohabitate with other brands allowed DITA to be seen by audiences that were sure to appreciate the craftsmanship that went into each pair of its glasses. As the brand continued to cement its relationships with Japanese artisans, the 2006 DITA X VISVIM collab helped keep the brand’s collaborative tradition going strong.
The collaborations were taken to the next level when the company signed a licensing deal with Thom Browne. In 2011, DITA was able to secure an agreement with Thom Browne that ensured their influence over the market would accelerate. The frames developed during this collab would go on to set multiple trends, even though the special lenses would require a special manufacturing process, the same kind of process that DITA was already used to going through since many of the brand’s frames are crafted for months on end before ever catching the eye of the customer. These trends helped catapult the brand into the eyewear market consciousness, ensuring continued growth, a growth evidenced by the expansion of DITA’s flagship locations.
The Flagships
With the 2005 opening of the company’s first flagship store in Los Angeles, DITA was now able to translate the brand’s high-end eyewear experience into a fully-immersive luxury shopping experience. Fans who were already obsessed with the designs now had a place to congregate and see these innovative designs in person. With the growing success of the brand, the brand was able to open up a bevy of new stores, all of which shared the same level of attention to detail and aesthetic refinement as the first. By 2015, DITA had opened stores in New York City, Tokyo, Seoul, and Australia. Today, the brand has nine flagship stores catering to a wide variety of eyewear customers, from casual fans to expert eyewear connoisseurs.
As the company grows into newer and newer generations of eyewear fans, DITA will most likely continue to expand and open up more flagship stores, but always on their terms. With the exclusivity their artisanship demands, it’s no wonder the brand doesn’t use the kind of marketing gimmickry that many of the other high-end eyewear manufacturers employ today. When the focus is on quality, anything that strays from that focus only serves to deter the end goal. Head over to Designer Eyes for a vast selection of the latest DITA sunglasses and eyeglasses today.
DITA Epiluxury
From the very beginning of DITA Epiluxury, the focus was on one thing: quality. Available at Designer Eyes right now, DITA Epiluxury takes that sentiment to its logical conclusion. Featuring items with a heavy focus on modularity, the Epiluxury iteration of sunglasses and eyeglasses reveals layers to the DITA brand that need to be experienced to be believed.
