# Episode 41: Tracy Vontelle Green • Vontelle | Size Matters: Proving the Industry Wrong with Fit-Inclusive Eyewear

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fashion-translator-7762815/episode-41-tracy-vontelle-green-vontelle-size-matters-proving-the-industry-wrong-with-fit-inclusive-eyewear
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fashion-translator-7762815/episode-41-tracy-vontelle-green-vontelle-size-matters-proving-the-industry-wrong-with-fit-inclusive-eyewear.md
Podcast: [The Fashion Translator](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fashion-translator-7762815)
Published: 2026-07-21T13:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://clairelysbastienwald.substack.com/p/episode-41-tracy-vontelle-green-vontelle
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/205509158/7fe214197d13233c55bab75f99de0fd0.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-fashion-translator-7762815/episodes/episode-41-tracy-vontelle-green-vontelle-size-matters-proving-the-industry-wrong-with-fit-inclusive-eyewear
Duration seconds: 1804

## Resource

🎙️ In this episode of The Fashion Translator, I spoke with Tracy Vontelle Green, Co-Founder & CEO of Vontelle, about what it means to build a brand that solves a problem most people didn’t even know they had. Vontelle started with a simple, physical frustration: glasses that don’t fit. Frames that press into your cheekbones, temples too short, nose bridges too narrow. Tracy and her co-founder Nancy went to Paris, measured their friends’ noses, drew sketches, and found one manufacturer willing to break the mold — literally. What makes this conversation remarkable is how Tracy talks about resilience — not as a mindset, but as a series of very concrete decisions: saying yes before you know how, applying for every grant, showing up at the Brooklyn Museum on a Saturday to sell glasses, and pivoting to a government school contract when tariffs wiped out wholesale orders overnight. We explore: How a lost pair of glasses and a trip to Paris Fashion Week became the origin of a brand now in 900+ stores across the U.S. The product complexity behind fit-inclusive eyewear — why breaking the mold wasn’t just a metaphor, it was a literal negotiation with manufacturers What it looks like to run a business while working a full-time job, managing a health crisis, and shipping orders at 11pm How Vontelle became the first Black women-owned brand to design for America’s Best — and the first women-owned brand to design for Nickelodeon The cash flow reality of every channel: wholesale, D2C, retail, and government contracts — and why diversification wasn’t strategy, it was survival When you build something that actually fits the people who’ve been told to just deal with it, you’re not just building a product. You’re building proof that the market was wrong about who deserved to be served. ✨ C…

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