Mykita

Mykita was founded in Berlin in 2003 by five partners who set up their first studio in a former nursing home whose building number was 17, which became part of the brand name. The production is entirely handmade at Factory Berlin, the brand’s manufacturing facility in Berlin-Mitte, where stainless steel frames are formed through a screwless construction that eliminates the most common failure point in conventional frame design. A Mykita stainless steel frame is assembled without screws or rivets, using a system of interlocking components that the brand developed and holds the patents on. The frame flexes under the mechanical tension of the construction and returns to its original form, which is the principle that makes it adjustable and durable beyond what conventional hinge mechanisms allow.

The Georgetown store at 3001 M Street NW is the brand’s Washington address, carrying the full Mykita collection alongside the Mykita plus Maison Margiela collaborations that the brand has produced with the French fashion house. The design aesthetic at Mykita is emphatically contemporary, with silhouettes that range from minimal geometric profiles to the more expressive shapes that the brand’s seasonal collections produce. The stainless steel colorways include raw steel, gunmetal, copper, and the anodized color options that the brand processes in-house. Acetate frames offer a different material aesthetic that expands the catalog beyond what the metal construction alone can produce.

The Mykita customer is a specific type: design-aware, often in a creative profession, interested in wearing something that is genuinely unusual compared to the designer eyewear that occupies most of the high-end optical market. Film directors, architects, and design professionals are among the constituencies that the brand has cultivated and that appear in its marketing photography. For the Georgetown professional in the creative, policy, or cultural sectors who wants frames that are identifiable as Mykita to someone who knows the brand without carrying any logo beyond the material and construction’s distinctive character, the M Street store is the relevant address.

The price range is at the upper end of the luxury eyewear market: frames begin in the several-hundred-dollar range and reach over a thousand for the more complex designs and material combinations. This positions Mykita above the accessible luxury tier and in the range where the buyer is making a considered investment in a piece that will be a daily presence for several years. The handmade production in Berlin and the patented screwless construction support that price relative to the conventionally manufactured luxury eyewear at similar prices.

Hours run from 11am Monday through Saturday and noon Sunday. Online browsing at mykita.com provides the full collection, though the frame’s character and the fit are best assessed in person at the M Street store. The lens program at the Georgetown store covers prescription and non-prescription options, which allows customers to get their chosen Mykita frame fitted with the lenses they need rather than choosing between the preferred frame and functional vision correction. Polarized sun lenses are available for the Mykita sun frames, and the lens geometry that the distinctive silhouettes require is handled by the brand’s own lens program. For customers who have an existing prescription, bringing it to the store allows the staff to advise on which frames and lens combinations are appropriate to the prescription’s requirements.