TC Charton founder Alexandra Peng. Photos courtesy of TC Charton.
Seeing is Believing
Eyewear designer Alexandra Peng aims to give Asian Americans a fit of their own.
by Rebecca U. Cho
For the many Asian Americans who have known the disappointment of finding the perfect pair of sunglasses only to have them slide down their noses, emerging eyewear maker TC Charton could be the stylish solution.
TC Charton is the first eyewear line in North America designed exclusively for Asians, according to company founder Alexandra Peng, an eyewear industry veteran who spent 16 years in the optical industry designing glasses for luxury European brands that were sold in boutiques around the world.
“I came to realize all that stuff I was producing and designing were products I couldn’t wear myself,” Peng said from her office in Palo Alto, California.
So she embarked on a two-year effort to research and develop eyewear that would fit the Asian face and, in 2009, debuted the company’s first designs.
TC Charton’s eyewear takes into account common differences in Asian features from those of Caucasians, who are often used as the template for designs. “I don’t mean to generalize Asians. We’re a lot of us, and we all look very different from each other,” noted Peng. “But there are certain small characteristics we share in common, and those are the ones we’re trying to target in every style I offer.”
These features include a lower nose bridge, higher cheekbones and wider measurement from temple to temple, Peng said.
Since she launched TC Charton (which derives its name from her Chinese name, Tze Ching, and her husband’s surname, Charton), she’s heard testimonials from Asian American consumers long frustrated by repeated failures to find the right fit for their face. Many even told her they felt like they needed surgery to build a higher nose bridge or to fix their cheekbones.
“If someone goes through their entire life and can’t find something that fits them, and this is what they end up feeling about themselves, to me it’s pretty serious,” Peng said.
As someone who has been wearing prescription glasses since she was 11, Peng herself could relate. Born in Taiwan, she moved with her family to Argentina at age 10, and they were the lone Asians in Bariloche, a small town at the foothills of the Andes with a large population of Swiss and German immigrants.
“I grew up with mainly blond and blue-eyed people,” she said.
While shopping for glasses, she would often be told that she had no nose or had a flat face—negative comments that fostered feelings of inferiority. Decades later, the 42-year-old entrepreneur is using her technical knowledge and design background to reverse that kind of thinking by giving Asian Americans eyewear options that acknowledge their features and treat them like they’re normal.
TC Charton offers more than 50 frame styles, as well as a children’s line, that start at about $200 and are currently sold in 60 optometric stores in the U.S., as well as online. Notably, sunglass giant Oakley now markets an “Asian fit” line for customers, and Nike also offers Asian fit eyewear. But Peng, who is positioning her young company to address what she sees as the untapped Asian American demographic, is quick to point out that TC Charton is unique in that it exclusively focuses on Asian eyewear.
This article was published in the January 2012 issue of KoreAm. Subscribe today!
Related Articles
FOR ONLY $28!
Featured Event
One of the the biggest Asian cinema events to hit Southern California opens on May 10. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, features the latest works by established and emerging filmmakers, along with seminars, panel discussions and symposiums on topics relevant to Asian Pacific cinema.
Opening Night features “Shanghai Calling,” directed by Daniel Hsia and starring Korean American Daniel Henney, who plays a Chinese American expat lawyer navigating his way through the mean streets of Shanghai (the picture above also indicates he is a raisin smuggler). But does he take off his shirt? Go watch the movie to find out! read more
LINKS
Featuring Recent Posts Wordpress Widget development by YD
Awesome! I spend so much time trying to explain to people how hard it is to find glasses, and no one gets it :p