CHIMI

CHIMI was founded in 2016 in Stockholm by brothers Charlie and Alex Lindström and partner Heribert Pfistermüller as a direct-to-consumer eyewear brand built around a deliberately limited, hand-finished Italian-acetate sunglasses range. The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce a small set of well-cut, colour-saturated, hand-finished acetate frames at a €150-€200 price tier, positioned in the gap between the mass-market eyewear of Ray-Ban and Persol and the luxury-pricing of Cutler and Gross or Jacques Marie Mage. The CHIMI vocabulary settled around several specific frame shapes: the 004 (a Wayfarer-derived rectangular acetate frame), the 005 (an oval cat-eye), the 006 (an aviator-pilot), and the 02 (a smaller rounded oval). Each shape ships in a range of saturated acetate colours (mint green, peach, lavender, washed berry, ecru, washed navy) that have become the brand's visual signature. The brand has expanded into optical frames, a small leather accessories line, and limited-edition collaboration capsules. The brand is independent and held by the Lindström brothers and Pfistermüller plus several Scandinavian venture investors. CHIMI operates flagship retail in Stockholm (Norrmalmstorg, Östermalm), Copenhagen, Berlin, London (Marylebone, Notting Hill), New York (Soho), Los Angeles, Tokyo (Aoyama), plus an extensive direct-to-consumer e-commerce footprint. Few D2C-first eyewear brands have built such a culturally coherent retail expansion while maintaining the small, focused product proposition they began with.