Gai Gherardi, cofounder and designing artistic director of L.A. Eyeworks, died Sunday following a quick sickness on account of cholangiocarcinoma. She was 78.
Gherardi was a pivotal determine within the eyewear business. She was an advocate for ladies’s rights, championing causes like Deliberate Parenthood, supporting AIDS reduction via Mission Angel Meals, and environmental efforts, significantly enthusiastic about defending the endangered California Desert Tortoise. She additionally served as board president of Artwork Issues, a New York-based nonprofit that gives grants to artists.
Born in Glendale, Calif., and raised in Huntington Seashore, Gherardi and enterprise companion Barbara McReynolds have been highschool mates who bonded over eyewear earlier than changing into licensed opticians and opening optical boutique L.A. Eyeworks in Los Angeles on Melrose Avenue in 1979.
Gai Gherardi
Courtesy Photograph
With Gherardi’s imaginative and prescient, the corporate gained recognition for its daring designs, with distinctive shapes, vibrant colours, and unconventional supplies — reworking the position of glasses from a purely useful merchandise to a style assertion. Alongside the way in which the corporate turned a go-to model for eyewear-loving celebrities like Elton John, Woman Gaga, Johnny Depp and Iris Apfel. Notable names have appeared within the model’s advert campaigns via the years, together with Grace Jones, John Waters, George Clinton, David Hockney, Rufus Wainright, Zandra Rhodes, Sir Ian McKellen, Jodie Foster, RuPaul and, most lately, Justin Vivian Bond.
“The beauty of Gai is that she was an individual who knew who she was,” mentioned Bond. “That’s such an exquisite factor to see in others. It’s inspiring. Conversely, in case you are a self-determined particular person like she was, it’s usually assumed that you just don’t need assistance with something. Gai was one of the unselfish, giving folks I’ve ever know. She introduced pleasure into the lives of so many together with her type and together with her exuberant life drive. Regardless that she’s gone, I do know that that vitality will stick with these of us who have been blessed sufficient to know her for the remainder of our lives, and hopefully we’ll have the ability to hold her reminiscence alive by sharing it.”
The campaigns have featured a various vary of fashions, folks of all ages and backgrounds, specializing in the inventive side of eyewear. “A face is sort of a murals. It deserves an ideal body,” reads a long-running slogan, a trademark of the model. The primary advert, launched in 1982, featured the late Paul Reubens, higher generally known as Pee-wee Herman, and was photographed by Greg Gorman.
“Gai’s legacy is common for her sense of creativity in design, within the arts and serving to others. She was at all times forward of the curve,” mentioned Gorman, including, “Each time she walked right into a room together with her colourful outfits and massive smile, she made everybody really feel good. I knew her 43 years and he or she was at all times like that. We had an amazingly shut friendship. She was so instrumental in my life, personally and professionally….Gai had a larger-than-life persona however, and that is essential, she by no means invoked it on anybody. She was one of the humble and respectful and loveliest folks I ever met with.”
Grace Jones for L.A. Eyeworks.
Courtesy of L.A. Eyeworks
With Gherardi, L.A. Eyeworks has left a mark on Hollywood and music, showing in movies like “Thelma and Louise,” “The Matrix” and “Blade Runner.” The model has additionally established a presence within the artwork world, with its frames exhibited on the London Design Museum, the London Craft Council, the Los Angeles Craft Museum, the London Faculty of Style and the Chicago Athenaeum, amongst others.
“The genius of what Gherardi and McReynolds created with L.A. Eyeworks is its infinite flexibility and knack for zeroing in on timeless ideas,” mentioned Robert Wealthy, chief government officer of L.A. Eyeworks, in an announcement. The corporate — with McReynolds now serving as adviser, since her departure in 2011 — will subsequent open a retail flagship in Hollywood on Fairfax Avenue this spring. “It’s a legacy we are going to proudly carry ahead into the longer term.”
