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Maureen Ryza is a sunglasses pundit. She’s the Rachel Maddow of vintage eyewear with, like, X-ray vision, but instead of seeing bones and the gum you swallowed in middle school, she can see the make, model, selling and market price of your shades.
Before starting AZYR Specs (the palendrome of Ryza), her career zigzagged wildly. After studying Sports Broadcast Journalism in Missouri, she up and moved to New York to work as a stylist on projects for folks like Kid Super and Eli Manning, then to costume design on Law & Order, to bartending at Bowery Ballroom, at one point she was living on a cruise somewhere in the Caribbean. A night out with her has similar qualities. An innocent dinner date will ends with us thumping a kebero on a stage in Flatbush.
Two years ago she asked me if I’d do a test shoot wearing glasses she had remodeled. She’d quit her waitressing job, where we worked together, and was starting a vintage sunglasses company. At the time, starting a business seemed to me like a cute idea.
We meet at Spongies Cafe in Chinatown to talk AZYR. She’s just received her first business card.
Okay, Maureen.
MAUREEN RYZA: [Laughs]
This is serious, Maureen.
RYZA: Okay I’m serious.
Okay, in a sentence, what is AZYR?
RYZA: I source vintage glasses from collectors around the world and then I work with an optician to remodel them with new lenses.
And how’d you discover that so many vintage frames go unused?
RYZA: So I worked on a movie called Pinball that was based in 1975, doing the costumes, and the props department would put the actors in glasses and they'd come back a completely elevated characters. I just wanted a pair for myself so I started asking around and I just went down a big rabbit hole. I first looked on Ebay and found hundreds and hundreds of vintage prescription glasses. Then I found there's deadstock, there's the glasses that opticians aren't using because they're outdated, and it keeps going and going. I didn't really expect how vast it is. And working in costume design and styling, I see first-hand how wasteful the industry can be-
In what ways?
RYZA: If you have a small budget, you're going to Zara or H&M, and glasses are easily lost, people see them as throwaway items, so they'll buy really cheap ones. I just wanted to find a way to try and combat this, so I find vintage frames that are just taking up space on the shelf.
This was two years ago, so what were the steps after the initial business idea? You made, like, a Squarespace?
RYZA: I got the idea in November when I was living upstate, working on this film, and I began calling opticians, asking who would change lenses for me. When I got back to New York a month later, I remodeled three glasses, and I did a test shoot with my friend Taj, who's a photographer, and my other friend, Eloise, you, [laughing]. I put them on Vestiaire Collective and a month later, one of them sold. That's when I was like, okay, it's a business. I'm going to go for it. That was in January, 2022.
What has been the arc of confidence and taking your business seriously?
RYZA: The confidence came after I did my first popup and I sold like nine pairs. It was at Leisure Center. That was 2022, four months after my first pair sold.
How did the Leisure Center popup come about?
RYZA: Frank, the owner, has kind of been a big supporter. I used to live in a neighborhood where his shop is and we were friends and I had bought a sweatshirt from him at Artist and Fleas years ago, before he opened the store. He saw what I was doing and was like, “I was actually thinking of you and wanted to ask if you wanted to do a pop up here.”
And he knew about AZYR because of Instagram?
RYZA: Instagram. At that point all my sales had come from Vestiaire Collective. I had a website, but it wasn't very credible looking, like all my product shots were with a sheet over a mirror on my iPhone, so he kind of took a leap of faith with me. That first popup showed me people want my product. I had a pair of Prada glasses I had remodeled that morning and then they sold 15 minutes later. I never even got a photo of them.
And were you making a profit at that point?
RYZA: I was, everything that I made I put back into it. I'm pretty sure that I was using unemployment. It was hard at first. I had quit Lucien, my restaurant job, and I was like I’m not coming back, I want to pursue film and I need to make myself available. There were two very dry months, but I just believed in it and made it work. I did take out a loan.
What’s your fav glasses you’ve ever remodeled?
The Yoko Ono Porsche Carrera shield glasses. It’s cool to see how glasses can become such personality pieces: Karl Lagerfeld with his dark Chanels, Audrey Hepburn with her black wayfarers, Anna Wintour, etc. When you look up this frame, almost strictly photos of Yoko Ono come up. Recently, I won it in an online bidding war from one of my European collectors. It’s my prized possession in my current collection.
Also the 1980s Luigi Colani green glasses. Colani was a German designer who specialized in automobiles — Fiat, BMW, etc. and expanded his practice into home goods of all sorts. He eventually did a stint with Murai who manufactured all of Jean Paul Gaultier’s glasses and designed his own, translating his aerodynamic, futuristic mind into eyewear.
Fav pair I remodeled was 1960s Polaroid thick black frames with royal blue lenses. I actually lost these and printed out “Missing” signs and posted them around the LES. Never found them but they went pretty far on social media, a lot of people in Morocco and Chile messaged me about buying them.
Your instagram is really popin but you don’t think it gets you a lot of sales?
RYZA: Instagram is helpful, when people see it they want to buy into the whole persona around the brand, but once people actually put the glasses on and feel the personality and confidence, it's a much easier sell.
Have you learned a lot about how to close the deal? From the first Leisure Center pop up until today?
RYZA: Yes. There’s a trajectory, I’ll say “these are vintage glasses that I sourced from different collectors around the world” and they're like, “Oh, cool.” But when I say “I work with an optician to remodel them with new lenses” they’re like, “Wow.” I think it's the one-of-one that really gets people to be like, it's now or never.
Do you have any key moments or people that you met that really changed the business?
RYZA: Yes, a few people. My optician that I work with is a rock star. I love him. A lot of people in the costume community have worked with him before, and he did my first pair of glasses and then has just been fantastic. I asked him once if it's inconvenient to do all these colors, cause it's not really traditional, and he said that it feels like painting to him, so it's a great creative partnership. And I have a stylist friend, Rachel Waxenberg, who just recently has been pulling my glasses for music videos and campaigns.
Brag a little bit. Any really great projects you’ve seen them in?
RYZA: She just did a shoot for Sam Edelman that they're in.
Oh my god, does that feel surreal?
RYZA: It does, it’s so cool. There's a couple musicians that she's pulled for, like Honey, Sid Simons, Coke Cherry. Which is just cool because my favorite thing to do with AZYR, besides sourcing the glasses, is to have creative campaigns around them. I love working with photographers.
Yes, I really wanted to talk about that. You have incredible shoots, you have all these cool photographers, how does this come about?
RYZA: I'm there for the shoots, sometimes. I've done mood boards, but sometimes they'll come to me with an idea and want to use my glasses and I'll help with the styling, or if there's already a stylist then I will work with the stylist to pick which frames work the best. It's definitely a collaborative process.
Are these people finding you through Instagram?
RYZA: Yes. Or they're friends of mine that I just meet through the creative scene in New York. There's one photographer in Nigeria, who has pitched to me an entire team of people, like hair stylists, makeup artists. They worked on Beyonce’s film Renaissance, and it's this incredible team, but it's just shipping and trusting my glasses to go all the way to Lagos without me, so that's another thing I would love to do is a business trip and have a shoot there. I like to see AZYR as a tool to work with other creatives.
Let’s talk aspirations.
RYZA: I would love to have a little booth or stand at Dover Street Market, it could be very conceptual and fun and I feel like their customers are my customers. I honestly would love to have them in actual optic shops because I have so many frames that I haven't remodeled yet that are perfect for people with prescription.
Do you have any like small, similar type businesses that you really like right now?
RYZA: Definitely. I think that New York has a really cool vintage scene. One is Charlot Abhors. It's on Canal Street. It's like above the McDonald's and you never know it's there, but they have a whole little AZYR case.
What? I didn't know that!
RYZA: They do. I pulled all the glasses recently because I had to pop up, [laughs] but I'll bring them back. Others are Allegra Vintij on the UES, Edith Machinist, Superette, Screaming Mimi’s, not gonna lie some of my fav tops I have I’ve found at the Beacon’s Closet off the Morgan L… Fav jewelry is Eden’s Harvest, they make these upcycled vintage beads into gorgeous pearl earrings. LAAMS is a cool space that I've carried glasses at before. Honestly I feel like Susan Alexandra would be a cool spot.
Oh my god, yeah, yeah.
RYZA: I'd like to have really cool, colorful glasses.
Last question: say, I'm wanting to start a small brand in New York. What would be your advice to someone who is new, doesn't know all these people that you know, how does one break in?
RYZA: I would say it's important to do market research. So like no matter whatever field you're going into, know what kind of competition there is, who the leaders are, what they're doing, and then figure out a way to differentiate yourself.
And how much does knowing the right people help?
RYZA: I think it helps. Going to art events, going to restaurants. Talking about it. The more you talk about it, the more people are going to give you feedback, be interested or be uninterested.
Okay where are you going to meet these people?
RYZA: Gallery openings, things like that. 1969 Gallery is great, I’m a live music person so anywhere with music around I’m gravitating towards. Fiction Bar/Cafe in Williamsburg, Sauced, Caravan of Dreams is my favorite place to sit and work and daydream. This is a good question though because as an entrepreneur I constantly feel like I have work to do which limits my social time. Also, if you have a physical product, wear the product.
Yes. That's huge. Every time we go out, everyone's people come up to you saying how, like, “oh my god, I love your glasses”. Then boom.
RYZA: Yeah exactly. Putting yourself out there.
