Creative designer and friend of celebrities best known for turning glasses into fashion accessories
TONY GROSS, who has died aged 78, was one half of Cutler and Gross, purveyors of trendy eyewear to the famous and the fashionable; earlier, he had been house poker player at the White Elephant Club in Mayfair.
For Gross, glasses were about more than correcting vision. “Eye contact is the first sexual contact you can make with someone,” he explained.
Cutler and Gross opened in Knightsbridge Green in 1969, with Gross providing much of the creative input to Cutler’s managerial acumen. Soon their distinctive spectacles were being worn by the likes of David Hockney, Elton John and Grace Jones, who would sip cocktails in the store while encouraging customers to select increasingly outlandish styles.
In 1989 Sting was seen wearing the “Eccentric” frame, with one lens circular and the other oval, while in 1991 the Princess of Wales attended the British Grand Prix at Silverstone wearing Cutler and Gross sunglasses.
Gross, who was round and charming, enjoyed recreating designs of earlier years. He faithfully reproduced the iconic wraparound frames won by Aristotle Onassis and brought back the little round Algha spectacles of 1932 that could fit inside a gas mask.
Nor did sunwear escape his attention. “Sunglasses can be tribal, like a mask,” Gross explained, adding that the actual presence of the sun was irrelevant. “People wear them because they know they look good in them.”
Anthony Gross was born on July 12 1939 and brought up in Mile End, the son of Muriel and her husband Abraham, a Polish-born Jewish GP who ministered to a distinctly working-class part of the East End throughout the Second World War. The family was highbrow and literate. Gross’s brother John, once described as “the best-read man in Britain”, became editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
Young Tony attended the City of London School and his father wanted him to take up medicine; he, however, preferred the clubs of Soho. They compromised by Tony enrolling on the optometry course at Northampton Institute (now City University), where he met Graham Cutler. The pair were soon firm friends.
When they graduated in 1963 Cutler remained at college as a research assistant and Gross joined an optician’s practice in Holloway Road while moonlighting as a professional poker player. But they both became increasingly frustrated with the range of glasses on offer: either boring, unsuitable or just plain ugly.
They began collaborating in 1969 after chancing across a former hairdresser’s shop, bringing on board George Smith as their frame maker. Nevertheless, the great British public took some convincing. “Your glasses were a medical necessity, not something to be enjoyed,” Gross recalled of the prevailing attitude.
At the time it was illegal for opticians to advertise, but as early as 1979 they got around the ban by shooting images of glasses chains. The law was changed in 1985.
The pair opened a second store in 1978, on St Christopher’s Place, although it quickly became more of a social club than a retail venture and closed in 1983. Yet the brand continued to thrive and soon Cutler and Gross were exhibiting at fashion weeks in Paris, Milan and London.
Gross, who adored being surrounded by beautiful people, explained how he had once shared all the typical accusations that the world of fashion was “superficial, ephemeral and lightweight”, but added: “I learnt that it’s exactly these traits that make it so exciting.” He retired 10 years ago.
Throughout his life Gross was a compulsive collector and his archives have included matchbox art, antique spectacles, watches and erotica.
Tony Gross was unmarried. He is survived by a nephew, Tom, and a niece, Susanna.
Tony Gross, born July 12 1939, died March 6 2018