As we mark ten years of Jacques Marie Mage, we return to where it all began: the nascent sparks, the first bold forms, the foundational silhouettes that set our course. With Origins, the inaugural offering from Réserve by JMM, we invite you to rediscover the earliest expressions of our ethos—limited-edition spectacles from the first season of the Circa Collection, which consisted of exactly four styles: the Dealan, Zephirin, Hatfield, and Fontainebleau.
Though modest in number, these four archetypes established the framework of a vision that has endured: a fascination with the musical iconoclasts of the Sixties, an admiration for the grandeur of Empire Style and the Premier Empire Français, and a reverence for the mythic landscapes and frontier spirit of the American West. Each theme, distinct yet interwoven, continues to shape the Maison’s narrative, and each is embodied in these early works with a clarity that is both rare and revealing.
The culmination of a decade’s worth of exploration and experimentation, here we offer a focused curation of these rare and iconic frames and their stories, often in colors that have not resurfaced since their debut.
Dealan
A tried-and-true classic that celebrates the relationship between an artist and their eyewear, these original Icons of JMM were one of four Circa styles released in JMM's first season, Spring 2015. Inspired not only by the music and ethos of Bob Dylan, but by the actual pair of black spectacles he wore throughout the tumultuous mid-1960s while touring Europe, these glasses offer a classic silhouette that evokes a timeless devil-may-care charisma.
"Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'. just might tell you the truth."
— Bob Dylan
“I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.”
— Bob Dylan
hatfield
The American West is a land of myth, magic, and mystery, the promise of fortunes to be made, scores to be settled, and legacies written in stone. Here amid the purple mountain majesties and fruited plains where buffalo roamed free, stories of buried treasure, oil, and gold beckoned those willing to risk it all: the outlaws, explorers, prospectors, cowboys, settlers, and hobos willing to test their skills and try their luck.
“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope."
— Wallace Stegner
"Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse."
— Will Rogers
fontainebleau
At the turn of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte sought more than military conquest—he sought a visual language equal to his imperial ambitions. Enter Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine, architects whose mastery of antiquity and modern invention birthed Empire Style: an aesthetic of symmetry and splendor, where eagles and sphinxes, bees and laurel wreaths, proclaimed the grandeur of a new Rome. Together, they transformed palaces (like that of Fontainebleau and Malmaison), interiors, and even furniture into instruments of power, their designs as theatrical as they were enduring.
“The word impossible is not French.”
— NapolÉon
"We are born, we live, and we die in the midst of the marvelous."
— NapolÉon
Zephirin
In the years leading up to World War II, spectacles ceased to be simply corrective instruments and began to shimmer with new possibilities. What began as innovation in plastics and etching, as engineering solutions for comfort and fit, evolved into something larger: eyewear as self-expression. By the eve of the Second World War, glasses were no longer the discreet scaffolding of vision but part of the architecture of identity itself, shaping faces as much as they clarified sight. From the salons of Paris to the soundstages of Hollywood, eyewear became a cultural accessory, a coded language of glamour, intellect, and intrigue.
“It all must start with an inspired, spontaneous idea.”
— Raymond Loewy