A Certain Electricity

January 19, Boyle Heights. A winter morning in Los Angeles that feels quietly charged. The sun is low, the air crisp, the city holding its breath between the robotic fluctuations of traffic lights. On a side street, a studio hums with preparation. Inside, lights warm, cameras wait. Jeff Goldblum sits casually, holding court, riffing, thinking aloud. Somewhere between takes, Jérôme Mage joins him. The conversation begins, stops, resumes. Like jazz. Like film. Like the way this unique creative partnership has always worked.

This is the third chapter in an ongoing dialogue between Goldblum and Jacques Marie Mage, a relationship seven years deep now, which has most recently resulted in the release of two styles: JEFF, which returns in all new limited-edition colors; and FLY, a new silhouette inspired by the glasses worn by Goldblum in the mid-1980s, reimagining a cult-era frame with exacting clarity and cinematic tension. The partnership is an expression of passionate exchange: ideas traded, references shared, objects becoming conduits for something larger.

Inside the studio, Jeff turns a frame over in his hands. He pauses, considers. “What I’m holding here is the new version of the Jeff, in a color called Volvox—it’s a Volvox green. I’m changing my name to Volvox! Wow, what a frame. Here I have in my hand all the power of a lightning bolt. To even hold it is electric and feels important.”

Electric is a word that keeps coming up to describe the new handcrafted eyewear. Not a thing, not a product, but energy. Action potential. The feeling that something is alive.

The day moves in fragments. Jeff in the dressing room, studying himself in the mirror. Jeff under the lights, lenses catching the glow. The stories keep circling back—Toronto, New York, Hollywood soundstages, dressing rooms, the quiet rituals of getting ready. What emerges is a constellation of influences: films watched when young, icons studied closely, objects held onto for decades. Sure, style for Jeff is about performance. But it's also about refined accumulation. A vocabulary built over time.

When Jérôme asks the questions, they aren’t prompts so much as invitations. The answers unfold the way the day has—digressive, associative, memories triggering other memories. Glasses become time machines. Jewelry becomes a talisman. What follows is less an interview than a shared improvisation, two collaborators tracing the qualities of what makes something—or someone—endure.

Jérôme Mage: What comes to mind when you hear the name of our new frame style, the Fly?

Jeff Goldblum: Of course, you know I did a movie in 1986 or 87 in Toronto, where my wife is from, with the great director David Cronenberg, called The Fly. So there’s that association. But another association is that of the word ‘fly,’ as in cool, as in the film Super Fly—and I knew that guy, I was on with him in a Broadway show in NYC in the early 70s… 

So, I can’t claim to be fly, that’s for others to say. But if I’m wearing these glasses, I’m certainly more fly. 

JM: Who are some of your favorite icons of eyewear?

JG: Well, Peter Sellers was a glasses wearer, and I loved him early on. I remember I saw the first run of Pink Panther in the theaters. 

Of course, Steve McQueen, with his sunglasses, was very cool, but oh! — Michale Caine. Have you met Michael Caine? He was a great leading man who wore glasses. And I loved him. I was a kid when Alfie came out. 

Now that I think more about it, I remember on the Dick Cavett Show, that appearance where Robert Mitchum appears in a pair of tinted glasses that are really good. 

And of course, Marcello Mastroianni. The epitome of handsome, dashing, leading-man elegance, with a great cinematic, iconic look. Isn’t he wearing a pair of glasses in 81/2?

JM: I frequently admire the jewelry you wear. Where did your passion for jewelry come from? When did it happen?

JG: Well, I sit at your feet, you are the master of jewelry, and what you're wearing on your hands right now is really something, I want to study all of it and learn all about it. 

As for me? Well, one of my most treasured possessions currently is what you gifted me, which is a bolo tie that you made. I'd actually been after a bolo tie, hankering for it, for a long time. I found some stuff, and didn’t like any of it, but this bolo is fantastic. I wear it a lot, this is the only bolo tie I have now. How did you do it? 

JM: Thank you Jeff. You know, the bolo features a rare Blackjack turquoise that comes from Nevada and is hand cut by our Native American friend Johnathan McKinney in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it's then set in that beautiful silver chassis that is right now anchored around your neck.

JM: If you’d have to pick a pair of glasses in one color, what would it be?

JG: If I had to pick one color, well, of course, I'd have to pick Black. You know, if you only have one, it would be Black. But so many, as you know, so many colors are so very delicious in all different varieties. 

JM: It's true. You know, we’ve made some colors that are a little more interesting than black and almost as versatile, and people would have never thought about it a couple years ago, but I think we changed that. 

JG: You certainly have, congratulations, and bravo to you. And, just for me personally, I love a green, I’ve always flirted with it, hankered for it, but before you, I don’t think we’ve had a perfect green.  

You know, I just played The Wizard in these Wicked movies and his color is green; he’s in Emerald City, of course. And so, in fact, for that movie I wound up not wearing glasses; we looked at some green glasses and just didn’t end up wearing them. 

JM: How does wearing sunglasses make you feel?

JG: Well, like a lot of people, sunglasses make you feel like a movie star all of a sudden. Anybody can feel like a movie star when they put on sunglasses. Any outfit, you look cooler, you look more interesting. Unless, it’s dark out, and it’s something like, ‘Hey, who’s that guy? Why is he wearing glasses at night?’ 

But, for style, I love a dark glass, I like getting my picture taken in sunglasses, and, as you know, I like a little tint. I think it's nice to have a little interesting frame-coordinated tint—it can say so much.