Interviewing the writer, editor and book publisher Steven M.L. Aronson requires yards of advance work, as in an innumerable amount of questions, suggestions and discussion.
 
Bordering on human AI, his thoroughness leaves nothing to chance. (Most people as they speak don’t tell you which words to italicize or bold. Let’s not even broach the subject of punctuation.) Such markings are well-earned by Aronson. Quick-witted and unapologetically direct, he has long been ensconced in notable New York City circles. What really makes him unmissable, though, is his style signature — statement eyewear. Having amassed a serious collection of colorful, eclectic eyeglasses, he doesn’t bury them in drawers or stash them in satchels. 
 
His 125 pairs of eyeglasses — of which 70 have his current prescription and are part of a constant rotation — are housed in his apartment in a limestone building on what he laughingly calls “Cell Block East 71,” since two of the nearest town houses belong to Bill Cosby and to the late Jeffrey Epstein. Aronson happened to snap an iPhone photo of FBI agents and New York Police Department officers battening down Epstein’s solid oak front door that wound up on the front page of The New York Times in 2019. Aronson had just returned from the Apple store for a primer about how to take a photo.

After much convincing, he agreed to share some of the back stories about his statement eyewear with WWD.

WWD: Why did you start collecting eyewear?
Steven Aronson: Once upon a time, a friend gave me a pair of frames with a big-bow-wow provenance: Alain Mikli for Claude Montana. I had been wearing the same nonassertive ones for years, and these were anything but. I took them with me to Maine, where I’d rented a little place in the ultra-exclusionary summer colony of Prouts Neck, which was long the home — and subject — of the great Realist artist Winslow Homer. For me, Prouts was more about its beautiful, sandy, heart-shaped beach, access to which was privileged through the Prouts Neck Bathing Association clubhouse. I was duly put up for membership, but then the queen bee — the tutelary spirit of the place — a Lake Forest heiress married to a Boston Brahmin — tried to keep me out, reportedly on the grounds of my new eyewear. I was admitted, and her sentiments only inspired me to acquire more eyewear that I felt might further offend her. With every purchase, I’d think, “One in the eye for her!” But in retrospect and in all fairness, I want to take a moment now to salute the old scold as the instigation for my collection.  

WWD: Did your eyewear ever offend any other “Mainers?”
S.A.: Years later I was invited to a dinner party in Tenants Harbor, up the coast. I drove there little knowing that I would find myself at a table presided over by the Chief Justice John Roberts, who, it turned out, had a house on a small island just offshore. The lady seated between him and me began feeling sick and excused herself, and the table closed up. As, I guess, an icebreaker, Mr. Chief Justice said to me, “Unusual glasses.” I happened to be wearing the very ones that had caught the Prouts dowager’s jaundiced eye. I shared their back story with him, and I think he smiled when I quipped that it could have been the basis for an antidiscrimination lawsuit that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. I mean, nobody should be discriminated against for their eyewear.      
 
Now, on my other side that evening was one Helga Testorf, the woman that the artist Andrew Wyeth had secretly made all those hundreds of sensational paintings and drawings of. But she suddenly got up and wandered off, as was evidently her wont, and the table closed up there, too, with Andy, whom I already knew, taking her seat. He’d overheard the tail end of my story and laughed, “Knowing that club, I’m not surprised.”
 
WWD: So that sparked a lifelong spree?
S.A.: Right. There was an Alain Mikli boutique on Madison Avenue just around the corner from where I lived. A snappily dressed Jamaican man by the name of Garthunvaryingly waited on me, and his response to any pair whatsoever that I tried on was, “They’re crucial,” which did the trick: I bought them. I ended up as one of their biggest customers: they even had me photographed and hung me on the wall between Steve Martin and, I think, Kanye West. Over time, I branched out to Mikli’s artisanal onetime disciple, Jacques Dunand. The company that owns his brand asked me to do a photo ad campaign, which I — regrettably — turned down. And then I branched further out to Jacques Marie Mage, Kuboraum, Theo, Anne & Valentin and Masahiro Maruyama.
 
WWD: What was the best compliment you ever received for a pair of eyeglasses?
S.A.: Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I say theft is. One dark night last winter I stopped in the middle of 58th Street between Fifth and Madison to look at a text. I was holding my phone in one hand, and my glasses in the other — I had had to take them off to read — and lo and behold, a ride-by criminal on a Citi bike swerved over and grabbed them both. He sped away, but paused at the corner of Fifth where, presumably seeing it was an iPhone which of course wouldn’t unlock, he smashed it to the sidewalk and pedaled on his way with only the glasses. They had precious little curb appeal, by the way — being made of horn, they were just quietly costly. So he apparently had innate good taste.
 
WWD: Do you know anyone who has collected more eyeglasses than you?
S.A.: My late friend Baroness Marion Lambert, of the striking looks and gilded life. She was tirelessly described as a visionary art and photography collector, but to me she was also an eyewear visionary — she had literally hundreds of fabulous frames. She was to die in a spectacular fashion, absentmindedly walking straight into the path of an oncoming double-decker bus on Bond Street in London. But one simply has to appreciate the cruel irony of such a deluxe number being knocked down by a pedestrian bus rather than, say, a Rolls-Royce or a Daimler. My own tears were shed as much for her orphaned eyewear as for her.
 
WWD: How did you wind up in a J.Crew campaign last year?
S.A.: They were sponsors of the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and were launching limited-edition canine-themed merchandise. One of their brand people had seen a photo of me and my dog Quintus online. He’s my fifth of his dying breed, and all the rarer for being a water-hating American Water Spaniel. Some of his predecessors were photographed by [Robert] Mapplethorpe, [Andy] Warhol, Peter Beard, Harry Benson and Kenneth Noland. And this last one has also had his day, as a dog-of-the-day on the wildly popular website “The Dogist,” When I asked if he could wear his custom Goyard collar of inestimable cost (a handsome present from our late great friend Anne Cox Chambers) for the shoot, I was shot down. But my request to wear my own eyewear was honored. A veritable team of stylists selected some purple oval Anne & Valentins from the 16 pairs I had brought with me. In the end, I was disappointed to see my glasses blurred out of all the photos, which I can only attribute to their not wanting their stuff to be upstaged. I felt I looked faceless without them, but then the ad went on to elicit the most “likes” on the J.Crew website. Beats me.
 
WWD: Stylistically, how far are you prepared to go with your frames?
S.A.: The enterprising manager of the Anne & Valentin shop on Madison [Avenue], Tyler Trinh, once reached out to me about some eyewear from the Belgian designer Theo that he insisted “has your name on it.” I took one look at his wares and burst out laughing, at the same time feeling chilled — he must have mistaken my name for “Hannibal Lecter’s”! The sinister face-pieces he pressed on me struck me as things to be worn only if you had an important serial killing coming up. 
 
WWD: Would you ever consider parting with any of your pairs?
S.A.: One of them perhaps but not really. My good friend and near neighbor Joan Didion and I used to do long thrice-weekly walks in Central Park with our respective pooches — her Wheaton Terrier mix, “Ellie,” and my aquaphobic Water Spaniel. Joan would always wear those oversized faux-tortoiseshell sunglasses that she’d modeled for a famous Celine ad campaign at the age of 80 — Juergen Teller took the photos. One afternoon when we were taking a breather on a bench by Bethesda Fountain, she asked if she could try on my sunglasses for a change — I again happened to be wearing the ones that had so scandalized the powers-that-be at Prouts. In my opinion, they put her Celines to shame, but she felt otherwise. I was glad, since if she had fancied them, I would have felt obliged to offer to give them to her. Hers went on to make headlines after her death when they sold at auction for nearly $30,000 [in 2022 at Stair Galleries]. So I guess I could always put mine up on eBay with the tagline “as fleetingly worn by Joan Didion.”

And now I’m suddenly remembering an encounter with the legend among legends and her oversize dark glasses. George Plimpton used to host an annual July 4th fireworks party on the greensward behind his rented beachfront house in Wainscott, and one year, for a wonder, he walked me over to his old friend Jackie Onassis and plunked me down on her blanket. She was wearing, as usual, those huge dark glasses of hers, which she kept on long after the sun had set. At one point we were speaking of a mutual friend and, seemingly without any sense of self-awareness, she breathily asked me, “But why does he always wear those dark glasses?” 

WWD: Which pair would you wear should you ever get to meet Elton John?
S.A.: I did in fact meet Elton John, thanks to his friend Ingrid Sischy. I wore my most subdued ones, naturally — out of deference to his exponentially greater eyewear profile. Didn’t wanna try to steal his thunder.
 
WWD: Was there ever a pair of eyeglasses that you wished you bought?
S.A.: Not if I could help it. One day back in 2019 I stopped in at the Punto Ottico store on Madison Avenue where I had purchased all my Jacques Durands, one by one: the same style in 11 colors, in premium cellulose acetate. My eye was arrested by a couple of pairs in a stunning new shade, the purple of wisteria, sitting on an almost-out-of-the-way shelf. Giovanni Noro, the manager, told me that they had been custom-ordered by no less than Spike Lee, one of their biggest customers, to wear to the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony — he had evidently been nominated in three categories. The fabricator in Italy had been so nervous about making a pair destined to be worn on an occasion viewed by untold millions the world over that, unbeknownst to Spike, he had gone and made a spare. I said, deductively, “He can’t wear both,” and I persuaded Giovanni to let me buy one of them. On the night of the awards, Spike won the one for best adapted screenplay. Photos of him accepting the award and wearing what I was by then convinced were my glasses were everywhere. Later, when he launched his own line of those wisteria-hued beauties, they wilted on the vine. 
 
WWD: What’s next for you in the way of eyewear?
S.A.: Breaking news: I’m facing cataract surgery, the outcome of which could well mean I won’t even be needing glasses — at least in the ophthalmological sense. What I intend to do is have all my lenses popped out and replaced with plain glass. My eyewear may cease to be utilitarian, but I will always regard it as far, far more than a fashion statement — rather, as almost a part of my anatomy. It is not dispensable, it is not expendable — it is, in the unforgettable word employed so effectively by Garth formerly of Alain Mikli, “crucial.”