Masunaga

Masunaga has been making eyeglasses in Fukui, Japan since 1905, when founder Gozaemon Masunaga brought craftsmen from Osaka to the region and helped establish it as one of the world's three great centers of eyewear production — a legacy that still accounts for 97% of all Japanese-made optical frames today. Over 120 years later, the company's founding principle hasn't changed: make excellent eyeglasses first, and let the profit follow.

That principle shows up in the making. Masunaga keeps every stage of production in-house, from raw material to finished frame, a roughly 200-step process that lets craftsmen catch and correct a flaw at its source rather than after the fact. The result is a collection built on the idea of timeless elegance — classical design with a contemporary edge — recognized with Japan's first Silmo Award for sunglasses in 2000 and worn by royalty across nine decades.