MONTESTELLA chose SILMO for its official debut. At the end of September, at one of the international optical industry’s key events, the new Italian brand presented its first collection, the result of a research-led process bringing together eyewear expertise, design culture, precision engineering and the development of advanced materials.
MONTESTELLA begins with the engineering of the frame, even before its form. From the outset, the aim was to create a product with an identity of its own, recognisable through the very way it has been designed and made. Lightweight, technical and essential, the frames have an almost Nordic rigour while remaining unmistakably Italian: in their sensitivity to form, their manufacturing culture and in the relationship between engineering and emotion that has long been part of the history of Italian design.
At the technical heart of the project is a hinge with a patented integrated mechanism that simplifies the architecture of the frame by bringing several functions together within a single structure: the same system secures the lenses while controlling the opening and closing of the temples. Structural rigidity and controlled flexibility work together in a compact mechanism engineered to maintain precision, stability and reliability over time.
The research also draws on the discipline of fine watchmaking, where tolerances, materials and surface treatments make a difference even when they remain unseen. The project began with the development of a new mechanical solution: a level of complexity that is almost invisible in the finished object and is experienced above all through the way the frame performs in use.
The same approach extends to the six materials selected for the collection: bio-based carbon fibre, glass microspheres in a bio-based matrix, bio-ceramic, medical-grade 316L stainless steel, bio-acetate and beta titanium. Each has been chosen for its specific characteristics and performance, including lightness, stability, strength, comfort and durability. Some originate in fields such as aerospace, advanced engineering and biomedical applications, and adapting them to eyewear required extensive research and experimentation.
From High-Tech Materials to Local Expertise
This is where the manufacturing expertise of Sordelli comes into play. With more than a century of history, the Italian company has established specialist expertise in plastics processing and injection moulding. With this new collection, Sordelli chose to explore different materials, technologies and processes, while also putting its own manufacturing know-how to the test.
“With MONTESTELLA, we had to approach production in a different way. With some of the materials, we needed to rethink and recalibrate how we used our machinery and tools. It was a long process of trial, error and fine-tuning,” comments Dino Sordelli.
Behind MONTESTELLA is a professional relationship shaped over more than ten years of collaboration between Franco Sordelli, the long-established company based in Venegono Inferiore, near Varese, and Milanese designer Tommaso Bossetti, who have already worked together on a number of eyewear projects.
For MONTESTELLA, they brought together a range of Italian skills and specialist expertise to give shape to a project that required more than two years of dedicated work. MONTESTELLA therefore grows out of a shared history, but also from a desire to try something new, to experiment and to venture into less familiar territory. At its heart lies a passion for Italian craftsmanship, design, materials and the way an object is constructed.
The production process follows the same philosophy. MONTESTELLA calls it Slow Made: allowing the time required to make things properly, before speed or volume become a consideration. The frames are entirely Made in Italy and produced in small batches. Every stage of the supply chain is entrusted to Italian partners, and every component, including the screws, is exclusive to the project and traceable back to its source.
The project also brings together expertise developed within the historic eyewear districts of Belluno and Varese, where an important part of Italy’s manufacturing knowledge continues to be rooted in experience, specialisation and a deep understanding of materials.
“A good project needs time to mature, to make mistakes and to improve. Geometry provides the structure and technology makes ideas possible, but both require the patience to be refined. What I would like people to feel when they pick up a MONTESTELLA frame is not the complexity behind it, but simply that the object feels right,” says Tommaso Bossetti.
The name MONTESTELLA ultimately brings the project back to Milan. Monte Stella, near San Siro and better known locally as La Montagnetta, was created in the aftermath of the Second World War from the vision of architect Piero Bottoni, who transformed the city’s rubble into a hill and a new urban landscape, naming it after his wife, Stella.
Its debut at SILMO marks MONTESTELLA’s first encounter with the international market and with an audience of independent opticians, buyers and distributors. The collection comprises six optical styles, expressed through the project’s two distinct aesthetic identities: Presenza (Presence), warmer and more expressive, with a glass-fibre front and bio-acetate temples; and Essenza (Essence), cooler and more minimalist, with a forged-carbon front and beta-titanium temples.
