After SILMO 2026: What Eyewear Buyers Are Asking For - the Factory Side
Leeyewear
SILMO Paris closed its doors on September 28. 900 exhibitors, over 1,500 brands, four busy days at Villepinte.
The Trends Forum's lead mood this season is called CHARISMA. Big, sculpted acetate. Strong geometry. A colour palette pulled from old-master painting - Titian ochre, taffeta blue, a luminous green with real depth to it. The official material call is acetate, and plenty of it. Volume is back on the face, and the frame is doing the talking.
That's the show's version. Here's ours, built from what buyers have actually sent us this quarter.
1. Chunky acetate in unusual colours. The references coming in are round and octagonal fronts, deep profiles, colours you won't find in a stock swatch book. Fine - that's what custom acetate sheet is for. One thing to budget for: a custom-mixed colour means committing to sheet in volume, not by the piece, and it adds a few weeks before cutting can start. Worth it when the colour carries the collection. Pointless for one style out of twelve.
2. Thin titanium, done properly. Half the inbox wants the opposite of chunky. Thin fronts, wire temples, small clean hinges. The reason is plain weight: a well-made titanium optical frame sits around 10–15 grams before the lenses go in, and prescription lenses add their share on top. Anyone who has worn a heavy optical frame through a full working day already knows why this matters.
3. Mixed construction. Two-tone fronts, acetate carrying the colour, titanium or stainless steel carrying the structure. For private label eyewear lines this is the pragmatic middle - statement looks without full statement weight. One spec note from our bench: an optical front and a sun front carry different loads. Sun lenses run heavier, so hinge choice and bridge thickness move with the line. Same face, different engineering underneath.
4. Magnetic clip-ons. Honestly, this one caught us a little off guard. Requests for magnetic or snap-on sun clips have picked up quickly - one frame, a polarized TAC clip, on and off in a second. The questions we get are the right ones: magnet alignment, hinge stress, balance on the nose. A clip like this adds somewhere between 5 and 10 grams depending on lens size, but those grams sit right on the bridge, so they matter more than the number suggests.
And one quieter signal: a couple of clients have asked for plain frames with internal slots kept open for electronics modules. No module order has followed yet. For now, the request stops at the slot. We're quoting it anyway.
If you're planning a late-2026 or 2027 collection, the short version is this: a sculpted acetate line for the statement shelf, a thin titanium line for every day, or a mixed line that covers both. All three are standard work here. Send a reference photo or a spec sheet. We'll come back with material options, weight targets, sampling time and MOQ - straight numbers you can actually build a plan on.
Leeyewear - eyewear manufacturer China. Private label eyewear, acetate sunglasses, titanium optical frames, OEM/ODM.
Sources
SILMO Paris Trends Forum - official trend definitions CHARISMA and FANCY, acetate as dominant material, painter's colour directions. silmoparis.com
Vision Monday - recent optical frame launches, lighter profiles, transparent and layered acetate tones, mixed material construction. visionmonday.com
The Optical Journal - magnetic clip-on systems, polarized TAC clips, TR90 and stainless steel new-frame releases. opticaljournal.com