All Obituary articles
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News briefs
Giorgio Armani dies at 91
Giorgio Armani, the famous Italian fashion designer passed away last week at the age of 91, his company announced in a statement. The group, which he and his partner Sergio Galeotti founded just 50 years ago in 1975, is one of the largest independent fashion businesses today with an annual ...
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Cai Gherardi, co-founder of l.a. Eyeworks, has passed away
Cai Gherardi, co-founder of independent eyewear brand l.a. Eyeworks, has died at 78 after a brief illness. Gherardi and Barbara McReynolds, a high school friend, started the company in 1979, opening their store in Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, a place that soon became an art gallery as much as an ...
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Multiópticas president has passed away
Carlos Piñeiro Franco, president of Multiópticas, died on Jan. 4, aged 58, several Spanish websites have reported. He was the third-generation leader of the company that he joined in 1989 and where he became president in 2016. Multiópticas has a distribution network of over 600 opticians in Spain but is ...
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ArticleGuenther Fielmann has died
Fielmann Group has announced the passing of Guenther Fielmann, founder of the company and longstanding chairman of the board, on Jan. 3, 2024, at the age of 84. “My father Guenther Fielmann re-defined optical retail to the benefit of customers. His lifework fills us with respect and inspires us to ...
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Michael Pachleitner has died
Dr. Michael Pachleitner, the founder and CEO of the eponymous Austrian-based eyewear group, died on Oct. 31, 2023, the company has announced. Dr. Pachleitner took over the family optical store in 1984 at the age of 24, and progressively turned it into the Michael Pachleitner Group, an international and vertically-integrated ...
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News briefs
Blackfin founder has passed away
Blackfin has announced the death of Maria Luisa Pramaor, founder of the Pramaor company in 1971. Earlier, Maria Luisa Pramaor was one of the very first employees of Luxottica at the time when the company was just starting. Nicola Del Din, her son, is the current CEO of Pramaor.
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News briefs
Olivier Petitfils (ADCL) has died
Olvier Petitfils, general manager of ADCL Aplus, died last week, at the age of 57. Petifils, an eyewear passionate, started his carreer as a product manager for L’Amy. He joined ADCL in 1994 and was appointed as chief executive of the company in 2005 following the untimely death of Jean-François ...
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News briefs
Bertrand Roy has passed away
Bertrand Roy, a key figure of the Essilor group and the French optical sector for several decades, passed away just a few days ago at the age of 67, Acuité and other French websites report. After an initial 10-year stint at Renault, Roy joined the Essilor Group in 1987 where ...
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ArticleLeonardo Del Vecchio passes away at 87
Leonardo Del Vecchio, the founder of Luxottica and chairman of French-Italian group EssilorLuxottica, has passed away at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He had been hospitalized with non-Covid-19 pneumonia a few weeks ago, Adnkronos has reported. A father of six, he was 87 years old.EssilorLuxottica said in a statement ...
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Bernard Maitenaz, Varilux’ inventor, passes away
Essilor announced this week the passing of Bernard Maitenaz, the inventor of the first Varilux progressive lens. Born in 1926, Maitenaz graduated from the Arts et Métiers engineering school in 1946 and the École Supérieure d’Optique the following year, before starting a career at the Société des Lunetiers that later ...
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News briefsMaria Giovanna Zandegiacomo Seidelucio, wife of Marcolin’s founder, passes away
Maria Giovanna Zandegiacomo Seidelucio, the widow of Giovanni Coffen Marcolin, the founder of Marcolin, passed away on Oct. 7 at the age of 87. Her husband had died in 2013. She is survived by her children Monica, Cirillo and Maurizio. Cirillo Marcolin was president of the association of Italian eyewear ...
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News briefs
John Patrick Conway, a British optical industry veteran and past...
John Patrick Conway, a British optical industry veteran and past chairman of the Federation of Manufacturing Opticians (FMO), has passed away at the age of 60. Conway, born in Gloucester, joined the Norville Optical Group right after school. He then moved on to Seiko Optical U.K., where he was appointed ...
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Al Berg, the dynamic and visionary co-founder of Marchon Eyewear,...
Al Berg, the dynamic and visionary co-founder of Marchon Eyewear, passed away last month after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 67 years old. Berg founded Marchon in 1983 together with Larry Roth and Jeff White. He ran the company for 25 years until shortly after its sale to ...
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Christophe Gilabert, general manager of Anne & Valentin, died in...
Christophe Gilabert, general manager of Anne & Valentin, died in an avalanche while skiing in the French department of Isère on Tuesday. He was 55 and had joined the French company in 2006. Under his tenure, the Toulouse-based eyewear brand grew steadily to reach an annual turnover of about €20 ...
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News briefs
Neil Forbes, founder and former publisher of Insight News, the...
Neil Forbes, founder and former publisher of Insight News, the excellent Australian trade magazine on ophthalmology, died on Jan. 16. Born in 1942, he enrolled to study optometry at Sydney Technical College, but dropped out to pursue his twin passions of playing the trumpet in a jazz combo and surfing. ...
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Jean-Claude Hache, the co-founder of the Silmo Academy with Guy...
Jean-Claude Hache, the co-founder of the Silmo Academy with Guy Charlot, has passed away. A renowned and respected neuro-ophthalmologist, Hache developed, for the first time in France, a department dedicated to the functional exploration of vision at the University Hospital in Lille. His scientific research ranged from the most basic ...
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Jacky Buchmann, former chief executive of Buchmann Optical Holding (BOH),...
Jacky Buchmann, former chief executive of Buchmann Optical Holding (BOH), passed away last month at the age of 86. Taking the helm of the family business after his father, he transformed it by quickly developing the lenses' production and by taking over Briot, the French optical equipment company in 1980. ...
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News briefs
Spy has announced the passing of Seth Hamot, its former...
Spy has announced the passing of Seth Hamot, its former chief executive. Hamot died on March 22, after a long battle against lymphoma. He served as chairman of Spy's board of directors and chief executive from 2015 until late 2017. In Nov. 2017, Fir Geenen, an active member of Spy's ...
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Tony Gross, one of the founders of Cutler and Gross,...
Tony Gross, one of the founders of Cutler and Gross, passed away on March 6. He was 78 years old. Gross and his partner, Graham Culter, studied optometry at Northamption College, England. They began selling hand-made, fashionable glasses in 1969, setting up a store in Knightsbridge two years later. After ...
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Pierre Agnès, CEO of Boardriders, the group behind the Quiksilver,...
Pierre Agnès, CEO of Boardriders, the group behind the Quiksilver, Roxy and DC Shoes brands, has been lost at sea since Jan. 30. The group confirmed three days later that the search and rescue efforts were not successful in locating him. The Frenchman had spent the past 30 years, his ...
