Eyeglass Fashion (and Taking Sides: Plastic vs. Metal!)

(mini thread mutation: am i the only person who has an irrational aversion to contact lenses? i just can't stand the idea of something on my eyeball!)

For normal glasses, I like ... what do you call them, elliptical lenses but not completely circular, you know? Grape lenses. Blast, I had them bookmarked so I could remember in case they broke, and that was lost in the Great Bookmark Implosion of Whenever. Black or dark grey frames, thin. High-strength plastic (this is partly a habit from having lost so many sunglasses over the years, and partly because it seems the wiser course with thin frames).

Need new ones, which is irritating since I've only been wearing glasses a year and these cost me (... okay, cost my mother, and thank God for that) a nice penny.

Sunglasses: dark as fuck, black or silver frames, grape lenses slightly more squished than the regular glasses because I want the lenses bigger so I don't get that "my pupils think they're in the dark but I'm getting a lot of sun over the tops of the lenses oh fuck I'm blind" effect going.

(You're not the only one, Tad -- I won't even consider contacts.)

Plastic frames can look very nice, wire-rimmed frames are not very "me". That being said, plastic frames are not very "nabisco" to be honest, you're right about that--they'd kind of overwhelm I think.

I rilly need new glasses too. And I'm thinking about changing de stijl. The black plastic would be totally wrong for me. But what of the tortoise-shell plastic of my youth? The wire-rim is very much me at this point, but I'm not sure it would be a bad change.

(based on one photo, thinks wire-rims work for nabisco)

Get the "Venice". That's what I got and get compliments all the time from random strangers who have black-rim glasses that aren't quite right. Close, but not as cool as mine. And mine were $39.

Venice (and other black plastics) page.

Oh, they're "Char," apparently, not black. There's all this writing on the frames, it turns out. Whatever.

Me too, sweetie. I love chunky plastic frames. I'm automatically drawn to people wearing them. Even if they are played out.

I used to wear vintage cateyes all the time but this last time I updated my prescritption stupid lenscrafters said they couldn't fit lenses into my old frames. So I got these:

http://www.framesdirect.com/cdimages_lg/AUSTJoEL.jpg

They are kinda updated cateyes, a little more subtle than what I had before. Although I never hardly get "I *love* yr glasses!" the way I used to all the time with my vintage frames.

That site has just reminded me of the ultimate eyeglass-fashion question. Rimless: abomination or maybe not so horrible in limited cases?

Weirdly annoying. You're not wearing glasses and yet you are. Nobody really knows what you look like and keeps looking away so that they don't appear to be staring at you. Therefore, rimless = friendless.

I was gonna say rimless; I have a pair of Eyephorics. I did the clark kent thing for a long time, but I just got sick of it. I have a big roman schnoz, so it's tough fitting anything on me. You custom pick everything, color, lens shape, dimensions, and they're extremely light. For a little extra, you can get a little colored-in bevel around the rim of the lens, so they don't look too rimless. Also kind of pricey, but I was dating the shopgirl at the time, wahey, and since yr insured, so who cares?

there's a picture of someone's ass-ugly version here. Mine have squarer lenses w the bevelled rim and gray limbs.

and scaredy dammit i am so hot and i have many friends, i'm not gonna let you make me cry i won't i won't!!

Aw, c'mon, I was just blabbing. Rimless glasses look good on that guy who does all those Radio Shack commercials with that chick (I think he's a sportscaster?). Rimless look stupid on a lot of people is all, certainly not everybody!

This reminds me: has anyone on here ever possessed and regularly used more than one pair of glasses? I can't tell if this sort of thing strikes me as sheer lunacy or a wonderful idea.

Lunacy or wonderful idea, you be the judge.

I do have prescription sunglasses now, but since my glasses are reading glasses, I never use them and have no clue what I was thinking ("well, it might be very very bright and I'll be ... trapped outside ... waiting for a bus ... aaaand, I'll need to read the schedule, see ...")

Having more than one pair seems to be a gender thing. But a professional and then a fun pair is a common sales pitch.

I have had the same ever-so-slightly hexagonal wire elipticals since forever, like 6 years. I am ready just to stick forks in my eyes and stop worrying about this issue. I like the way the plastics look ok, but the fact that every person under 40 on the street has them kinda makes me want to but a pair of huge metal aviators. Nabisco, show us what you choose, I live really far from you, nobody will know I copied you.

:(

For years and years I swore by little round(ish) gold-rimmed frames. I liked the big black, chunky plastic indiegeek style, but they just didn't suit me. But now they've started making big chunky plastic indiegeek style glasses in colours other than black, I pretty much wear nothing but. I'm wearing Aqua plastic ones right now. (I really wanted to get green ones but Ed beat me to it.) Before that I had purple, before that brown, and before that orange.

It's really important to try a wide variety before picking a pair of glasses - and I'd reccomend getting *two* pairs of glasses so you have options (I still keep an extra pair of wire-rimmed glasses, which are my "posh" glasses.)

Oh, and memory metal is excellent in idea, but poor in execution.

How about some of these (from my opticians)
http://www.cutlerandgross.co.uk/glasses/classic/full/cg7.jpg
http://www.cutlerandgross.co.uk/glasses/optical_2003/full/0668.jpg

Find an architect and ask him where he gets his glasses and go there. Architect know secret places where the motherload of incredible spectacles comes from.

i settled on these http://www.josephson.ca/products/frames/lunor/ii.shtml

they fit my face the best, don't have nosepads, thus eliminating the indentation problem and v. lightweight and comfortable. they are expensive as hell but figgered for something i wear every single day may as welll be happy with 'em.

i do have a couple of other cheaper frames for emergencies (lose/break glasses) or going to the beach/hiking etc.

Also, I can replace the lenses and lens shape and keep the rest for when I want or need a new prescription or style.

My other pair are brown plastic tortoiseshell, which probably wouldn't.

http://www.39dollarglasses.com/store/images//thumb/2114_MatteGold.jpg

I got two pair, like Murphy Lee buying sneakers. One pair is pretty much exactly like my old ones, except rimless on the bottom. (I don't get this one for a week, actually.) The other pair is that bog-standard plastic-frame squarish dealie -- weirdly, the cheapest and most generic of this bunch looked okay on me, so I wound up grabbing them.

Most notably: Hart, Shaffer & Marx make these great big plastic ones that I almost got, and they are so Health Service / 70s couture, plus really gorgeous; they'd look terrific with an afro. (They made me look like a guy who could be a deep house DJ but was too cool for it; they'd probably make white people look like kids from early-80s Scottish indie-soul bands, just right with a tweed coat and upturned paisley collar.)

I can't believe I forgot earlier that there is a new turnaround-cool in eyewear, just one that doesn't work for me personally: it's all about the late 70s / early 80s, big glasses, colored tints, roundness, even that aviator crossbar at the top.

So, last weekend, I went into the Selima in the East Village and walked out with the a slightly boxy shape of a deep purple (I thought it was brown) with green sides. I almost chose the plain brown version in the same shape ("Dimitri") but thought it would be nice to have green on the sides. Then, today I walked into the Lunettes on Prince Street and found a "Jim" which is of a more rounded shape, and the color scheme is more muted, brown with lighter brown edges. The saleman told me that he thought "Jim" was better for my face than "Dimitri."

So, what should I do? Return "Dimitri" for "Jim"? Choose the more subtle subtle browns over the less subtle plum/green? Is Selima even cool anymore? They don't have my exact glasses on their website, but they do have the color combinations.

http://www.selimaoptique.com/

Please pick me a frame, or make other suggestions. And if Nabisco is reading this, do you want to go to Sway tomorrow night? I'll wear my new glasses!

Oh, and whenever I talk about buying new glasses, my mom says, just have them replace the lenses in the frames you already have. Sort of takes the fun out of it. My last glasses are tortoise-shell horn-rims. G. says I look like Harry Potter in them.

so i need new glasses. i currently have very small plastic frames. i want to get another pair of plastic ones, preferably like a brown or a grey (black is a little too bold for me) these are the ones i'm thinking about now:

http://www.faceaface-paris.com/applications/faceaface/medias/pictures/catalog/big/WOODY-832-01.jpg

my wife likes these, but wasn't w/ me when i went to the shop so she hasn't seen me try them on. she generally likes me in wire frames more, but i think i prefer plastic

(these are my current ones fwiw)
http://www.bestbuyeyeglasses.com/img/product.ashx/p?a8u0k600.jpg

another view of the new ones i'm looking at:

http://www.faceaface-paris.com/applications/faceaface/medias/pictures/catalog/big/WOODY-832.jpg

i kinda like these too:

http://www.sunsrus.com/get_photo.php?id=0138481&color=505&alt=

has anyone on here ever possessed and regularly used more than one pair of glasses?

Yes. My regular pair, my backup pair, and my prescription sunglasses. I wear the backup pair when it matches my outfit better.

All wire frame except for the sunglasses which are ridiculous wrap-around things.

yea ideally i'd like to have a pair of plastic and a pair of wires

my NHS discount thing was enough to cover two pairs so I thought what the hey I'll be an exciting variable guy, but the pair I bought as my first pair hurt my ears and make me look like a dick. Not like a twat or anything, but like a mean or generally unpleasant person.

Are the British speccy-foureyeses among us aware of Glasses Direct? I got my glasses (these and these) for under £35. Prices are obviously going up, but we're still talking high quality stuff for tiny tiny fractions of what you'd pay on the high street.

(hopefully they'll give me a bonus for that.)

that being, two pairs for under £35 total. I think they were £15 each at the time, plus whatever other fees.

those are cool glasses

yea ideally i'd like to have a pair of plastic and a pair of wires

Me too. Unfortunately the place where I like to get my glasses makes all their own frames and is kind of pricey so I probably won't be getting another pair any time soon which sucks esp since I have to wear my glasses almost all the time now. I really love the place though so I'm reluctant to go elsewhere.

Mark I like both the ones you posted but it would really depend on how they look on.

i get mine from this place - http://www.myspace.com/arckivcamden

you have to go there, though, no online ordering. the guy who runs the place is very nice and chatty and spends a lot of time in france and italy hunting through old warehouses full of forgotten glasses. he'll often find say 20 pairs of exactly the same style, never worn. costume designers are big clients cause they can buy like 10 pairs in case three of them break during an action scene. he said his glasses are in quantum of solace but he's still never seen the movie. he thinks they're bad-guy glasses based on what was bought. anyway what's crazy is that all his glasses are about the same price as what you'd pay at a normal optician! my wire specs are from ca. 1910 or so and they only cost 90 pounds, including lenses. my sunglasses are from this guy too, they're pierre marly glasses from the 70s. http://www.cofrase.com/triangledor/marly/uk/historik.htm

by the way, wraparound prescription glasses are..... really weird at first! i almost fell down twice and had a huge headache for two days. it was totally worth it though.

I just bought two pairs at once for the first time. A normal pair and a very cheap pair. Both are plastic.

The cheap pair is so fantastically ugly. I love them.

Oh screw it. Maybe I'll just get a cheap pair online and go back to the awsome place when it comes time for a new "real" pair.

yea it definitely depends on how u look in them. i've visited like 7 or 8 different shops since i got my perscription and have seen TONS of awesome frames, tho trying them on weeds out like 90% of them

is the big thing right now those circular frames? i see these everywhere
http://www.eyeglasseswarehouse.com/1849.html

http://www.framesdirect.com/cdimages_elg/lafont-alibaba-eyeglasses-100.jpg

Oh man I hope those aren't the new thing!!!

haha!

Seriously they're awful.

that's probably an ugly example, but yea almost every place i've been to has this huge selection of interesting circular frames. but i barely see anyone wearing them

Probably becasue they're generally not flattering on anyone. In and of themselves they're fine but I've never seen anyone really look good in glasses like that.

http://tingilinde.typepad.com/starstuff/images/DrBunsenHoneydew.jpg

i need new ones. i hate how all the ones that fit me at the eye dr had designs or sparkly diamond shit on them. current ones are black but have weird flowers on the side. yuck.

yea, me neither. i admire them in some ways tho. in new haven CT, there's this refined thin english-looking guy w/ wavy gray hair who runs this tobacco/smoke shop/lounge (the owl shop), w/ wood panelling and brown leather chairs and old rugs. he has glasses like this and looks awesome in them

http://www.faceaface-paris.com/applications/faceaface/medias/pictures/catalog/big/ALLEN-100-01.jpg

xp

OK maybe on the right person but still def going for a look and not like actually flattering frames. you know?

yea def

My cheap pair look almost exactly like the ones in this poster!

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTQyMjUzNTE0Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDI1MTk3Mg@@._V1._SX274_SY400_.jpg

Wow, this is SO WEIRD that this has been revived, because I've spent the past week buying / obsessing over glasses and thinking about starting a thread about glasses fashion. (I had totally forgotten starting this one.)

Also I'm completely confused by myself. "I'm resigned to wire" = I wound up getting plastic frames, wearing them for the past six years, and then being unable to even think about getting anything besides plastic frames for a new pair. And then this, WTF:

I got two pair ... one pair is pretty much exactly like my old ones, except rimless on the bottom. (I don't get this one for a week, actually.)

I have no other pair and no recollection of such! Did I cancel the order? Did get confused and move to New York and forget to pick them up? Did I say I was getting them because I was thinking about getting them and then changed my mind during whatever week of waiting is being referred to? These alternate-reality mystery-glasses are totally bugging me out.

I'm currently scouring online sites for alternatives to my boring/disappointing new pair, and waiting for interesting light-blue glasses to arrive in the mail. Twenty dollars! I never thought I would turn out a multiple-glasses owner, but given the online prices I might wind up with three.

I keep running into someone around town who has the big round Carrie Donovan-style black frames and they make her look like a complete twat, but that might be because she's a twat.

Carrie Donovan is not a twat!

(was not)

CD wasn't, but this girl is.

What's weird is that, umm, since I tend to settle on a pair of glasses and wear them for like 5-6 years, right now feels like an odd time to be purchasing, in terms of glasses fashion. The small plastic rectangular frames that read as a bit hip/stylish a decade ago now read as normal/standard and only "fashionable" in the very faintest sense, which seems to have started a size-of-glasses arms race leading to really chunky oversized and/or 70s-looking frames to maintain hipness (e.g., the horrible prop glasses they sell at American Apparel); I think this has reached its reductio ad absurdum point, but it's not yet clear to me which direction glasses-fashion will go next. (The bridge of my nose is not inclined to hop back in the direction of tiny steely wire frames, that's for sure.) For the time being I am sorta sticking with pretty conventional plastic frames with interesting colors/textures, especially anything that's lighter than my skin.

I'm shopping for new frames right now too. I'm pretty much restricted to plastics thanks to my prescription, and I've had the same pair since 1998 (I got some wire frames in about 2002 or so, but they've long since fallen apart).

Thanks to my enormously wide face, I have to shop online. None of my local shops carry anything over a width of 48 or 50. Who's got some good sites to check?

it's not yet clear to me which direction glasses-fashion will go next

http://purplegables.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/sally2.jpg

^^ they have already gone there, around here!

Sally Jesse is my eyeglasses hero. I was totally looking for ones like that, but settled for more squarish architectural ones.

Oh screw it. Maybe I'll just get a cheap pair online and go back to the awsome place when it comes time for a new "real" pair.

DO EEEETT!! I <3 my Zenni glasses so very much. I have.. 4 pairs? One purple, one red, and two black wire framed ones. The blacks ones are so boring to me now that I end up wearing the purple ones all the time! Only problem I've had is a nosepiece fell off my fifth pair, cool silver and white ones.. but I caught the screw & nosepiece and just need to find the appropriate screwdriver with which to fix it. Love my cheap glasses & especially love not having to worry about destroying a $200 pair of glasses! My dog ate my last pair and I decided to go cheap until my dog(s) & future children are all over 15. ;)

Yeah, I was thinking of you and your Zenni specs when I wrote that! :-)

xp to Johnny - I have had good luck with ZenniOptical.com and Goggles4U.com. Note that when I keyed in the wrong prescription, I got about 80% of my cost back from G4U and only 40% or so back from Zenni - so make sure you have the right prescription (my optometrist entered a - where there should have been a +).

Erica, I'm a ZenniWhore! I can't help it! I want more... :(

I don't wear glasses, but increasingly feel like I could use some (things always seeming just a *bit* blurrier than they used to) and have been looking at something like these: http://www.eyeglass.com/metose.html
I don't like the increasingly sleek, squashed rectangle thing that's been happening to plastic rims over the past ten years or so (I think?), and would like to have something with a bit more roundness, though not *completely* round.

If I wasn't smart enough to realize that I really need to try on frames to find out how they *really* look on me, I'd totally just order those right now and then worry about getting the proper lenses later...
because I know nothing about glasses.

Q: have any online-ordering fans used prescriptionglassesonline.net?

Plastic and only plastic for the last decade and a half.

Mostly it's cuz I can't stand the ubiquitous little nose-pad things on metal frames. So uncomfortable.

I didn't have enough money, then I did and had lasik surgery. Sparing the world more of this:

http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/60/85260-004-66758357.jpg
Uber-classic.

^^ that's what turned me -- not discomfort, but the slow development of visible nosepad indentations like my father's

they should just call those round frames "architect glasses"

I associate them most profoundly with poet/translator/critic/professor Richard Howard, who has all different colors to match his outfits:

http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/27/r_howard.jpg

(one advantage of them would be that you could roll your eyes UP and still see through your glasses for a while)

by the way guys, if you're looking for some vintage Malcolm X style frames check this guy out, I ordered a pair and it was great (the actual cutting of the lenses was a different story though)

http://optometristattic.com/

I'm looking for some big old-guy glasses at the moment, but all the shops now only sell trendy colored plastic rectangular frames now

"Malcolm X style" = the Shuron Ronsir frame, available a decent number of places, though not quite as easy to get in off-brand/discount/knockoff style