Outside what Clothix does, and outside what it plans to do. Eyewear has no pattern, no fabric and no seam, so nothing in a garment engine applies. We say so plainly on the roadmap. This page exists because the category gets asked about.
Why sheet and not moulding
Acetate sheet is made by layering and pressing coloured cellulose, so the colour and pattern go all the way through the material in layers. Mill a frame out of it and the tortoiseshell or the gradient is in the frame, visible on the cut edges, and it can be polished back without losing the pattern.
Injection moulding gives you one homogeneous colour and a moulding line, and it's much cheaper per unit at volume. The difference is visible at the temple edge, which is where people who know look.
The cost of milling is time and waste: material is removed and discarded, the part is cut in multiple operations, and then the tumbling — days in barrels with wooden pellets and polishing compound — is what produces the finish. There's no fast version.
What a frame is made of
| Component | Decision |
|---|---|
| Front | Acetate sheet: colour, thickness (typically 4–8 mm), supplier |
| Temples | Acetate, with a metal core wire inserted so they can be adjusted by heating |
| Hinges | Barrel count, riveted or pinned or integrated. This is what fails. |
| Nose pads | Integrated into the acetate, or separate silicone on arms |
| Lenses | A separate industry and a separate spec entirely |
| Measurements | Lens width, bridge width, temple length — the three numbers printed inside every frame |
The hinge decides the lifespan
Everything else about a frame is aesthetics; the hinge is engineering. A five-barrel hinge riveted through the acetate survives years of being opened and folded. A cheap two-barrel hinge glued or pressed into a shallow pocket works loose, and once it's loose the frame is done — you can't re-seat it without material to seat it into.
If you're evaluating frames or a manufacturer, count the barrels and ask how the hinge is fixed. It's the question that separates a frame that lasts from one that doesn't, and it costs almost nothing to specify correctly.
The realistic route
Eyewear manufacturing is concentrated in a small number of regions with deep specialist supply chains, and the minimums reflect a tooling-and-milling process rather than a sewing one. There's no low-minimum equivalent of private-label cut-and-sew that gets you a genuinely custom acetate frame in small quantity — the closest thing is choosing from a manufacturer's existing shapes and specifying your own acetate and finish.
That's a real and sensible route for a first eyewear product, and it's the same trade-off as private label versus cut and sew in garments: lower minimums, someone else's shape.
Why this isn't on our roadmap · finding a specialist manufacturer · all categories