Anne et Valentin in New York
More than 500 frames across 226 models, at our Upper East Side and Carroll Gardens shops. It is the deepest collection we carry, and with a brand built on colour, depth is the whole point.
They Got Tired of the Frames They Were Given to Sell
Anne and Valentin were a couple running an optical shop in Toulouse in the early 1980s. Valentin had taken his optician's degree in September 1980. The origin of the brand is refreshingly practical: they looked at what the industry gave them to put on their shelves, decided everything looked the same, and started designing their own in coloured acetate.
Their customers noticed immediately. What began as a small experimental collection for friends became a house that now sells in optical shops around the world, still independent and still run by the family.
There is a symmetry in us carrying it. We are an optical practice too, and the frustration that started this brand is one any independent optician recognises.
Not Parisian
French eyewear design in that period meant Paris, and Paris meant restraint. Clean lines, architectural rigour, a narrow and disciplined palette. Toulouse is four hundred miles south, near the Pyrenees, and it has never had much interest in doing things the Parisian way.
What came out of that workshop was warmer and louder. Asymmetric temples. Shapes that were graphic rather than discreet. Colour combinations that Parisian opticals would not have stocked, which was rather the point.
Forty years on the position has not softened. The frames are still designed and finished in Toulouse, the acetate still comes from Mazzucchelli in Italy, and select titanium styles are made in Japan. Every pair passes through hands before it reaches a face.
Colour Is the Argument
The founders put it as using colour to improve expression, which sounds like a slogan until you have a few hundred of these frames in front of you. Peacock and red tortoise. Midnight blue against tortoise. Purple with purple grey. These are not accent colours applied to a safe shape, they are the whole proposition.
The model names tell you something about the house as well. Calexico, Feist, Fanzine, Serge, Just Sing, Day Lewis. Musicians, films, small pieces of cultural shorthand rather than a numbering system.
Two hundred and twenty-six models is an unusual amount of range to hold, and it is deliberate. A brand whose argument is colour and shape is very hard to judge from a photograph, and almost impossible to judge from three or four frames on a shelf. You need to try a lot of them on, and see what your face does.
Where to Find Them
The collection is split across two of our three shops, and both hold real depth rather than a token selection. Around three hundred frames sit at Carroll Gardens and just over two hundred on the Upper East Side, in both optical and sunglasses.
Fitted in Shop
We are an independent optical practice and we have been in New York since 1989. We do the eye exam, take the measurements and fit the lenses ourselves with ZEISS optics, in the same shop where you chose the frame. Progressives included. Nothing is sent away to a lab you never see, and we are here afterwards when the frame needs adjusting.
Anne et Valentin shapes are often more sculptural than a standard frame, and that interacts with a prescription in ways worth a short conversation before you decide. It is the kind of thing an optician notices and a website cannot tell you.
We accept VSP and most major medical insurance for the eye exam. Frame and lens coverage varies by plan and we are happy to check yours first.
Come and Try Them On
Walk-ins are welcome at both shops. If you would like lenses the same visit, book an eye exam and we can usually have you finished in about an hour.
Locations and Hours