Stunning Sunglasses from Tender

Have you noticed the flimsiness of most sunglasses? Even from some of the more reputable brands. Leave them on your deckchair. Go off to buy an ice cream. Come back. Sit on them. Game over. We take an anti-flimsy and pro-substance stance at Tweed Towers (not to be confused with substance abuse).

Step forward the Hand Made Black Cotton Acetate Flat Top Sunglasses from our new, but immediately great, friends at London-based family business Tender.

Cripes, they're about as robust as is possible.

Tender Sunglasses - Made in England

The sunglasses are made in England from a single sheet of black acetate cut to a classic frame. The arms are cut to grip the head and have seven, count them, hinges.

About Tender

William Kroll, the founder of Tender, tells us how his company began, whilst wearing two pairs of the sunglasses. A difficult feat.

"I started Tender in the summer of 2009, and it's still a one-person (me!) company, run from home, in London. The idea started as a jeans brand, and denim is my professional background, although by now it's spread out to include all sorts of different clothes and products - which is a real privilege of doing your own thing.

"The tender on a steam train is the truck which carries the coal and water, just behind the engine. I like the robust, undecorated aspect of Steam Age engineering, and I've tried to bring something of this, along with its transparency of design and function, into the things I design. The other approach is that the when the owner takes on one of my products and begins to wear it in, they become its 'tender' and bring it to a higher level than when it was new, as one would tend to a flock of sheep, or a garden.

"In 2012, my wife Deborah and I started the Trestle Shop, selling experimental pieces (mostly objects and accessories) slightly outside the main clothing line, although there are crossovers.

If something has a good reception on the shop, like the sunglasses, then it becomes part of the main line offered to shops. In 2013 I'm also launching a new, second, line called SLEEPER. This will be made in Japan, as opposed to the main line, which is entirely constructed in England. While Tender stems from research into various different historical sources, and involves some experimental pattern cutting and construction, SLEEPER is based more directly on pieces from my own collection of 20th Century British Rail uniforms, which are reproduced in some beautiful fabrics. This will primarily stay in the Japanese market, but we're hoping that it will appear in some of Tender's international stockists as well."