Maverick, villain, libertine, genius. Austrian eyewear designer Udo Proksch has been known by many names, but the book excerpted here dives deeply into his archive, puts emphasis on his working methods, fecund productivity, and the undeniable impact he had on design in the twentieth century—and to this day.
I have been in the international eyewear business for more than forty years and collected vintage eyewear for half that time. One day I saw for sale a pair of Serge Kirchhofer Model 478 sunglasses and was astounded by it. My first thoughts were, “Who designed these and who let them be produced?!” I discovered that the designer was Udo Proksch, supported by Wilhelm Anger and his company Optyl. Udo had been the creative director behind such well-known brands as Carrera and Viennaline and eventually Serge Kirchhofer, his legal alias and personal luxury brand under the Optyl umbrella.
After acquiring that first pair of sunglasses, I kept looking for more and soon a sizable collection emerged, including eyewear, packaging, displays, and artwork. Eventually I went to Austria and acquired Udo’s personal and professional archive. With the archive in hand, I hired a team to curate and put together the story in an immense book we called Udotopia. We wanted to celebrate the creative genius of someone who was most often portrayed as a sociopathic criminal—due to his involvement in an insurance fraud plot in the 1970s—and the archive gave us everything we needed.
We launched Udotopia in December 2019 and recently optioned the book and the archive to an Oscar-winning filmmaker who is interested in telling the story in a dramatized mini-series. Udo continues to intrigue and to inspire.
—Michael Jardine
photographs are by Christopher Dew; archival images were re-photographed by Dew.
Six thousand drawings, one thousand frames, one hundred artworks. Apart from that, works-in-progress in the form of notes, models, and prototypes, and an abundance of marketing material including advertising mock-ups and photographic campaigns. To say Udo Proksch was prolific is an understatement; that he came along at just the right time is right on the money. Tulga Beyerle and Karin Hirschberger write in A Century of Austrian Design: 1900–2005 that “The late ’50s and early ’60s represent more than just the establishment of consumer society; they also offered—at least in isolated cases—real chances to succeed in a still unsaturated market. Udo Proksch’s (alias Serge Kirchhofer’s) success story must be seen in this light.” Udo paved the way for other eyewear designers by setting standards for design and marketing that were at the time unparalleled. In a very short time period, between 1954 and the 1960s, the three brands he represented as designer and creative director, Viennaline, Carrera, and Serge Kirchhofer, achieved unrivalled market share, selling well over 15 million frames a year. By the time he was in his late twenties, Udo was a famous eyewear designer.
The first step in Udo’s process was the concept drawing, examples of which have been preserved in their incredible stylistic diversity thanks to the designer’s penchant for archiving. The drawings include designs on magazine tears, newspaper clippings, professional drawing paper, napkins, calendars, hotel stationery, and beer coasters, with accompanying explanations on production methods or technical feasibility. Sometimes his renderings of frames are like artworks, with highly inspired details in pencil, pen, marker, and oil pastes, and with real gemstones stuck to the paper. If he was serious about pursuing one of his ideas he sketched out different perspectives, colours, and sizes, adding ornamentation like a composer who, starting from a few notes, eventually builds a simple tune into a symphony.
Various Carrera and Viennaline designs, produced for eyewear manufacturer and close Udo collaborator Wilhelm Anger, eventually ended up in corporate meetings where their fate was decided. For promising ideas two or more prototypes were created (under Udo’s Argus eyes) in acetate or metal, and later Optyl, iterated in different colours, and presented to the selection team, who decided whether or not the model was suited for the brand’s collection.
In the case of Serge Kirchhofer, the process was a little different, as Udo himself made the design and sales decisions. Whilst Anger financially supported Serge Kirchhofer, he deemed it too niche to achieve his standard of sales volumes, and he left it to Anneliese and Arnold Schmied’s firm Silhouette International to sell the frames. Not only was the scale of the Serge Kirchhofer operation different, but also the materials used: acetate, gold, silver, gemstones, leather, horn, and real tortoiseshell. Proksch was on board up to the very end, visiting the ladies in the assembly hall, discussing manufacturing issues with them, and scrutinising the quality of each component at each stage of production. Udo’s own customised stamp of approval, consisting of his name and a fuchsia-pink ink blot, features on various designs and artworks found in the archive—usually those which Udo had himself approved.
Udo’s penchant for being directly involved in product development was borne out in his marketing style as well, which bears the stamp of Oswald Haerdtl, former CEO of the Wiener Werkstätte and Udo’s professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In Haerdtl’s formulation, not only was absolute perfection in design and quality of vital importance, but the creator of the “baby” (product) must support and hand-hold it right up to the final handover to its eventual “parent” (the consumer)—what we today call an “end-to-end solution.”
Viennaline, Carrera, and Serge Kirchhofer each had its own customised suite of products developed for point-of-sales displays; each object in the suite was designed to work as a sales tool for the brand, in terms of aesthetics, cost, and functionality. To achieve this, the packaging and point-of-sales assemblage was designed with extreme consider- ation for individualised features, like hand-crafted typography, custom painting, illustrations, and photography. Carrera was functional, with a sporty aesthetic which suited the lifestyle associated with the frames. The packaging had to be designed and sized to suit each frame’s purpose, especially given that there were both sun and optical glasses, as well as large goggles to package. Serge Kirchhofer was given a luxury suite: silk-lined display boxes, leather pouches, scalloped-edge cleaning cloths, silk-screened backdrops—only the best materials, always. The training of the salesmen fell within the ambit of the end-to-end solution, and Udo’s frontmen were well briefed in sales arguments and promotional techniques for each product.
At that time in the eyewear business, things like packaging, cases, cleaning cloths, etc., were of a standard (mostly functional) design and quality. Anger allowed Udo a free hand in improving the presentation of the articles in opticians’ shops and display windows. There were different sets of instructions for each brand, relating to the point-of-sales items provided—and in case such items were not provided, strict visual display rules for each brand were prescribed. The claim by Udo in Out of Control that “we have more people in front of our displays than in all the Austrian museums combined” may have been hyperbole, but it conveys the importance Proksch attached to the displays, and the effect he wanted to achieve through the great attention given to creating them—a goal he was certainly successful in achieving.
Undoubtedly, Udo Proksch can be referred to as one of the most influential eyewear designers of all time. While this reputation is based on the plethora of products churned out by him, that productivity in itself was made possible by two other attributes: an ability to think holistically, and the energy to tirelessly process and translate his life into creative works.
This article is excerpted and adapted from Louisa Jean Cooper, Udotopia, published by Parragon in Delhi, India, 2019.
LUISA JEAN COOPER is a creative director, brand strategist, product developer, and author, as well as a holistic coach and healer.
Viennaline’s Opera Ball frames in handmade acetate with inlay of mother-of-pearl and sapphires, c. 1960.
Reproduction of Model 105 frames for Serge Kirchhofer, c. early 1970s, made by Barr in handmade acetate with metal and crystal, 2017.
Reproduction of Model 107 frames for Serge Kirchhofer, c. late 1960s, made by Barr in handmade acetate with metal trimmings and temples, 2017.
Reproduction of Model R1/149 frames for Serge Kirchhofer, c. 1968, made by Barr in handmade and hand-painted acetate, 2017.
