In case you’ve been in a fog and haven’t
noticed, eyeglasses are not just eyeglasses
anymore. Oh, they still help you to see better when your eyes alone aren’t enough. They still shield and protect your eyes from the sun. But they have become more than the sum of their parts. Eyeglasses — prescription glasses and sunglasses — are fashion tools and personality statements. There’s an eyeglass frame for every face shape, every mood, every event. That is also true of lenses, which have over the decades morphed from simple glass to plastic lenses; thinner, high-index or aspheric lenses for the very nearsighted; strong, durable polycarbonate or Trivex lenses; photochromic lenses for those who want their glasses and sunglasses in one; and polarized lenses to get rid of the glare. If you can’t or won’t wear contacts, you don’t have to worry about looking cool. When it comes to glasses, “everything is style,” says Madeline L. Romeu, an optometrist in private practice in West New York, N. J., and optometric adviser for photochromic lens manufacturer Transitions Optical.
Kenny Moscot, president of Moscot Eyewear and Eyecare in New York, says people like to get their eyewear ideas from the latest tabloids. “A lot of what people wear is celebrity-driven,” he says.
In women’s fashion glasses, the current trend harks back to the ’ 70 s and ’ 80 s. “These are very retro, very glam, very defining, very large,” Moscot says.
Many designers embraced the large-frame glasses and reinterpreted them with such 21 st-century touches as logos or etching on the side. “A lot of inlays within the plastic are becoming popular,” Moscot adds.
Romeu recalls the days everyone emulated the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in wearing large glasses. “Then everybody went into the small frame,” she says. “Now... we’re going back to large frames.”
For men in the larger urban areas, plastic frames are very popular. “It’s all the rage here in Manhattan,” Moscot says.
Barbara Wright, American master optician for Jones Eye Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, says that plastic frames are the most popular among her customers, the second choice being the rimless glasses. But it’s the women going for the plastic frames. Men here for the most part still opt for rimless or metal frames, she adds.
When it comes to 21 st-century glasses, “there’s so much that it’s really hard to keep ahead of it,” Wright says. “The new technology is just phenomenal.”
Optical retailers now offer fashionable lenses by a number of haute couturiers.
In prescription glasses available at LensCrafters (lenscraf ters. com ), women may choose from Vogue’s rectangular plastic frames with accent stripe and bold, chunky temples, $ 139. 95; Anne Klein’s skimpy, taupe metal frame with oval shape, $ 159. 95; DKNY’s prominent plastic frames with a six-sided geometric shape, $ 159. 95; Ray-Ban’s “edgy” rectangular glasses “with a bold cut-out silhouette,” $ 159. 95; and D&G’s thick plastic, retro frame with square shape, $ 189. 95. For women who want today’s fashionably large, square frames, they’ll find them offered by Salvatore Ferragamo and Bulgari for varying prices at LensCrafters. Women’s sunglasses include Burberry’s large, square tortoise shell glasses that are a take on Jackie O, $ 210; Prada’s wraparound sunglasses with bold plastic frame, $ 265; and Versace’s military chic-meets-Italian-luxury Navigator sunglasses, $ 199. 95.
For men, LensCrafters offers a classic, rectangular metal frame by Brooks Brothers, $ 149. 95; pink — yes, pink — rectangular frames by Vogue featuring plastic front and brushed silver temples, $ 139. 95; Ray-Ban’s chunky plastic rectangular frame, $ 149. 95; navigator-shaped Luxottica Memorize frames, made of memory metal to revert to their original shape after being bent or twisted, $ 199. 95; and, in sunglasses, the classic Ray-Ban Wayfarer style made famous by Tom Cruise in Risky Business.
SHADES OF GLORY Summer trends, according to the Vision Council of America, include sports silhouettes such as the wraparound and the shield from the Serengeti, Kaenon and Dior brands (including the notable Dior Sports goggle-style sunglasses with retractable temples ). Dr. Michael Wiggins, assistant professor of ophthalmology at UAMS, says the best sunglasses are, in fact, those that cover the eye and wrap around the side of the face. Large-frame sunglasses “act as a big windshield and block a lot of debris.”
The good thing is that protecting the eyes from a health standpoint has become a high priority among eyeglasses and sunglasses manufacturers.
“As a glasses wearer, you want to have a pair of glasses that will do everything for you” — help you see as well as protect your eyes by blocking ultraviolet rays that could cause cataract damage and possibly lead to macular or retinal degeneration, Romeu says. Glasses, she says, can also protect sensitive skin around the eyes — an area that usually doesn’t get any sunblock.
A Transitions study revealed that more than 84 percent of those interviewed were aware of skin damage caused by UV rays, but only 9 percent knew that UV rays could cause eye problems. “It’s cumulative” — the damage occurs over the years, Romeu says. This is one of the things she points out in her work promoting eye health for children — 80 percent of bad UV exposure happens before the age of 18.
Any dark sunshades will block UV rays, but how well they do so will vary, Wiggins says. If a pair of sunglasses promise, via the label, that they’ll block 99 percent of UV rays, good. “If they don’t, they’ll block some,” he says. “You just don’t know how much.”
He urges people to “wear at least something.” He suggest clipon sunshades for people who wear clear, nonphotochromic lenses.
Some experts believe customers should be more discriminating.
One of the mistakes consumers make in their eye wear, Romeu says, is believing that a $ 5 pair of sunglasses is just as good as a more expensive pair. She says that manufacturing cheap sunglasses is “like molding a plastic cup” — you’re going to get some distortion. Some people say they don’t like wearing sunglasses because they give them a headache, Romeu adds. She asks them if they paid $ 5 for their sunglasses. If the answer is yes, then that’s the problem. Lack of adequate UV protection is also a risk when buying cheap sunglasses, she adds. Photochromic lenses, such as Transitions (which block 100 percent of UV rays ) and SunSensors by Corning Ophthalmic, have become popular as regular glasses and sunglasses in one.
“People generally don’t like to switch between eyeglasses and sunglasses,” Moscot says. Combining regular prescription glasses with photochromic lenses enables the consumer to keep one pair of glasses.
DRIVING PROTECTION Regular photochromic lenses do not get dark in the car because windshields come already tinted with UV protection. However, Transitions has launched Drivewear lenses, touted as the only polarized photochromic lens that will actually darken outside and inside a car. Drivewear lenses react to different weather conditions, from overcast to bright light. Little Rock optometrist Beatrice Reed, president of the Arkansas Optometric Association, says she finds that the Drivewear lenses are a good fit for those patients who need the protection of sunglasses behind the wheel. “What I [had ] been doing in my car is... opening my sunroof” to turn her regular Transitions glasses dark, she says. “But now I don’t have to do that....” She notes a drawback to the Drivewear lens: It does not completely lighten indoors, as traditional photochromic lenses do. Officials of online retailer A Sight for Sport Eyes (sporteyes. com ) also caution that as Drivewear lenses do not go completely clear, they “should not be used for night driving.” Wright further warns that such lenses do not get as dark behind the windshield as they do outside in the sun. “You still do better with your [plain ] sunglasses.” Still, they are a worthwhile option.
As baby boomers age, so have eyeglasses... for the better. Progressive lenses — today’s no-line bifocals also known as Progressive Addition lenses — is another catchphrase among eyeglass-lens technology that has improved recently.
Progressive lenses “correct vision for two or three different distances without the visible segment lines seen in bifocal lenses or trifocal lenses,” according to their definition at online retailer opticsplanet. net. The site further states that progressive lenses “provide the most natural correction,” doing away with the “image jump” experienced by wearers of traditional bifocals or trifocals when their eyes move from one distance area to another. “It’s like a 35 millimeter camera,” Romeu says. The disadvantage of progressive lenses: Wearers must move their heads while they’re reading. Some progressive lenses, depending on brand, can be set in very small frames. Other brands need a much larger frame. Some have a vertically wide corridor (the area within the lens that one looks through for intermediate vision ) and some have a vertically narrow corridor. If the corridor is wide, the lens is easier to look through because there is more area to look through.
“They work better for people who do a lot of near work.... It keeps you from having to move your head as much,” Reed says.
Those who think they need reading glasses only should consider switching to progressive lenses, says Romeu.
Over-the-counter reading glasses are molded, so they’re not as good as fabricated lenses, she says. Also, no one has the same prescription in both eyes — “so you’re correcting one or correcting the other, and if you have an astigmatism there’s no correction at all.” People need glasses that will help them do everything — see the computer screen, drive, look at the dashboard, read a map — as well as protect them from the sun. At work, “they should have those progressive lenses on,” Romeu says. If they don’t, they’ll be putting their glasses on and taking them off the whole day. Indeed, with all the eyeglass choices available to help consumers look good and see perfectly, there’s little excuse for staying with the old military-issue “birth control glasses” with Coke-bottle lenses.
Moscot would most like to impress that upon older glasseswearers who are stuck in the days of the big, thick lenses for the very nearsighted. “They should have faith in the new technology... take a leap of faith.”
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