Alain Mikli - optician to the rich and famous

Eyewear designer Alain Mikli smiles at me from behind a pair of his signature frames in his store on Stanley Street in Central. "The thing that drives me is freedom," he says. It's not the sort of proclamation you'd expect to hear from an optician, but Mikli is no ordinary maker of glasses.

French-born Mikli, who is Armenian-Lebanese by descent, sits at the helm of a business that has a presence in 70 countries. He has 27 own-brand stores, four in Hong Kong. His shades have been seen on everyone from Elton John to Kanye West and Catherine Deneuve. Last year, he posted net sales of €60 million (HK$613 million), and this year Luxxotica Group announced it had bought his company for €90 million in a deal that will see him stay on in design.

After nearly 35 years in the business, what makes him most proud is his reputation as the man to go to when you want a bit of rock'n'roll from your eyewear. It is his customers who really bring his glasses to life, he explains. "What interests me about eyewear is that I do maybe only 70 per cent of the job. The design is only complete when somebody chooses the frame and wears it," he says.

According to Mikli, it was a mix of chance and necessity that landed him in the world of glasses. "By accident, I found this optical school close to my home - and that was my lucky thing. I wanted to have five minutes more in bed every day. So I studied to be an optician, and in the end it was a great job. I still don't want to do anything else."

For Mikli, making glasses was always about more than just delivering frames to people who needed them. "When I started, glasses were a necessity. They were mostly a medical product. They didn't involve any pleasure, so slowly I tried to change the attitude of people." He noticed the negativity that used to come with wearing glasses, and resolved to try and change that.

"Why should you be sad or stupid because you can't see very well? For me it's not logical. You can be very pretty because you are unique and wear glasses."

In offering his consumers a chance to tick both the practical and fashion boxes, Mikli has erased that negativity. "It's very funny - today even people who don't need glasses want glasses. I never expected that," he says.