Schinasi was born to immigrant parents on this day in 1907 in Manhattan, New York. She created the Harlequin eyeglasses frame, also referred to as the “cat-eye” frame today.
Her father was a Sephardic Jewish Turk, and her mother was a native of Salonia, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. After high school, she studied painting in Paris, where she first developed a love for the arts. She returned to the US, enrolled in The Art Students League in New York, and started working as a window dresser for several Fifth Avenue retailers.
The Ful-Vue model from American Optical, which had hinges on the upper part of the eyeglass frame to disclose the wearer’s eye from the sides, was an early example of the cat-eye eyeglass shape. Altina Schinasi, a window washer, later created a frame she termed the Harlequin frame, after the character’s mask from Italian commedia dell’arte that was then widely used in fashion and design. To produce these, Schinasi worked with well-known retailer Lugene. Clare Boothe Luce, a socialite and writer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, purchased one of the first pairs, greatly enhancing the new fashion’s notoriety. In 1952, American Optical and fashion designer Claire McCardell debuted their own take on the look as the first line of designer eyeglasses.
