Spectacles Blog

When It Comes To Spectacles; What are Trifocals?

I can’t remember where I first saw this… As you can work out, the current posts are a bit of a rag bag (or “miscellany” if you want to be polite) based on any old spectacles subjects.because I have a load of “drafts” that need to be published or deleted.

Anyhow I read about the so-called “concept of trifocals”,claiming that “Bifocals have ruled the scene for quite some time now”.

Spectacle Lens Itself

But trifocal lenses according to this long-forgotten source, deals with each of them separately, correcting vision presbyopias progressively. (And I think this is the key here,the word “progressively”.) So as far as I can make out these trifocals are not tri at all (other than they deal with three slightly separate problems- reading/intermediate range and long range) but vari-focals - surely?  And like vari-focals, they don’t have lines across the lens.

So really it’s like a progressive lens which makes a progressive change from distance vision to near vision with all the range in between.

So what an earth is this all about then?  To be onest I’m not sure…  The only oint would be if you needed to have a larger areaof one of the three sections rather than astraight progressive. Apparently this may be good forcomputer users.  Also apparently, they are becoming more rare in repsect of increasing use of progressives.

The image here is borrowed from Hollywood Optical, a lab who obviously still supply them to those who dispense them.

Apropos Of The Word Spectacles Only…

No Spectacles Here...

I haven’t read this story: It looks too long to read on the screen but if you want to, you can follow this link to Edgar Allen Poe’s short story called The Spectacles.

Let me know if you manage the whole thing.  I guess one day I will be obliged to read it or else I’ll lose my claim to have the broadest Spetacles knowledge - even though by no means the more comprehensive or the most useful.

Erudition At Spectacles Blog?! Surely Not

Witman But No Glasses

There’s an article that came to my attention (it had the word “spectacles” in it) in The Yale Alumni magazine on-line including such prose as follows…

“The eyeglasses, by the way, are real, but it doesn’t seem impossible for Whitman to have decided that Walt Whitman, capital W capital W, would wear glasses, just as surely as he’d wear workingman’s clothes, a beard, and a big slouchy hat.”

I’m an English graduate but I guess that I’m out of practice because I didn’t have the time to read the whole thing - or is that just my story…  But you can read it if you choose. 

Glasses But No Witman

Meantime, I’m trying to find a picture of the said man in said glasses.

I found Walt and I found the glasses but not together.  My friends with the monocles would like the style… maybe.

Spectacles Blog Gets Comment About Price

Over My Spectacles, You Will

I got my fit-over sunglasses as you can see from Reading Glasses Shopper as seen on Spectacles Blog.  I haven’t photographed myself in them yet but I will (watch this space).  They are only $16.95 at said site.

Then David asked if there somewherein the UK which sold them for less thn the £25-ish he’d seen them at.  So I had a search and could only find them for more! At Sunglasses Shop the equivalent were £30 and still £27-something at Amazon, which is generally a good place to search for the lowest prices.

So I don’t know where cheaper. Maybe try to get from the States by mail?

Two Big Names Link Spectacles Fortunes?

It’s a touch unclear what this will entail exactly, but Lady Gaga will be developing “imaging products” for the Polaroid company and will market a line of Gaga name-branded cameras and accessories according to The New York Times [NYP]. Apparently she has signed a long-term contract with Polaroid to do so and not only to be a face for instant-photography (what used to be called “Polaroids”).

Gaga About The Glasses... Or Not?

The current queen of Pop is to be titled creative director at Polaroid, (in bankruptcy last year).  “Lady Gaga is a great creative talent who has a lot of passion for this brand,” said Jamie Salter of Hilco Consumer Capital, one of Polaroid’s new owners.  Hilco make specs parts and repairs of spectacles.

But does the deal include the sunglasses and shades of the same name? (sunglasses were “pioneered by Polaroid founder Edwin Land in 1937“).  We don’t know. Are they even the same comany any more.  I expect not.  What a waste as this lady loves her sunglasses and eyewear.  Can someone help explain this?

More Spectacles’ Image Building… Luxury Desiger Style

Culter Gross Boss In Blue Specs

You should see the times on line story for full details but it starts off with the adage that spectacles used to be to correct vision but now they’re something else.  And the boss of Cutler & Gross, one of the established houses of glasses, now run by chief executive Majid Mohammadi is spinning a good story and living it - in his blue spectacles.

They are commissioning designers (where have we heard that before) to make their own range of deluxe specs.  These will be premium fashion items with leather and jewels in bold designs.  This is not Select Specs!  This is taking wearing the right glasses to the level of Jimmy Choos.

Plus of course there’ll be more accessible ranges for the followers of fashion without the pop star incomes.

PS I like the idea that Cutler & Gross to date do not lend out to the rich & famous they’re so exclusive.

Who Can Tell When & What Fashion Will Be In Glasses?

As usual the tinernet is hot with comments and referrals to the new TV ad from Specsavers - after being positively on fire from the “sperm” ad you’ll only see on-line.

Bad Glasses Or Just Awaiting A Revival?

As usual it’s a clever gag leading to the inevitable “Should have gone to…” but my comment is how they choose specs to be definitely and positively un-fashionable?  This guy is wearing 70’s style specs and I don’t know if his eye-sight or his insight is in question, but the frames look wrong for these days but not oh-so-much.

Ladies are wearing repro/retro frames from this period now.  I’ve just had a spam comment punting Rayban oversized Aviators which are in the same vogue - with brown tints.  So who’s to say that these won’t be back in fashion soon.

I bet there’s people seeing this ad [a] who don’t notice that the specs are supposed to be bad and [b] who want some like them!

How Specs Are Gaining All The Time In Style & Image

I read last year (I know I’ve had a lot of time off spectacles for a while and I’m just caching up now) three pieces and two completely different articles that endorse just how specs are on the up & up these days when it comes to image.

Jimmy Choo Dixon Sunglasses

First up were two bits about matching your handbag with your spectacles - and I guess (because I’ve lost the link) that this applies to shoes too because these specs featuring in one of the articles are from Jimmy Choo - who from watching TV (SITC) and an occasional glimpse of the OH’s magazines are, I gather,  the dog’s dangly bits when it comes to shoes.

The trouble with the article as I remember was that the shoes and the bags didn’t really match - they were just vguely the same colours.  Now there’s a chance for someone…to actually co-ordinate a pair of specs and a bag and a pair of shoes.

Second up was the concept that fashion at the moment is basically colours and these are really coming out through  “vintage” perspective.  Now I remeber that the Jimmy Choo sunglasses were from this idea. And they do have a vintage colour.   I can see big 50’s appliances in this colourway,not to mention ice cream from the ice box.

Whichever way,  there’s a lot going on with vintage and this is helping specs image no end.  Madmen (seen it?) will probably help bring back browlines soon.

Higher Priced: Higher Spec Spectacles From Oakley

Are These Sunglasses Too Expensive To Leave In MacDponalds?

I read somewhere recently that the glasses & sunglasses maker Oakley, known as fashionable (in a young man’s world) but not necessarily as a traditional “luxury” good maker is going against the tide (discounting and lowering prices) by adding more expensive products to its stable of products.  Previously they had been the one firm very noticeably introducing hi-tech into eye-wear through electronic add-ons.

Last year, Oakley introduced the “C Six,” a $4,000 pair of sunglasses made from 80 layers of carbon fibre that “mould to your face”. (But they don’t play music - for that price, why not!?) The Oakley spokeswoman calls the glasses an “engineering feat.” With carbon fibre and tungsten iridium (what is that?) they are said to be very light.  And they are going to do the job (look good and protect your eyes from the sun’s rays).

The C Six sell for six times the price of the company’s previously most expensive glasses.  I have no idea yet if they’ve been selling or not.  I suspect they have!  Reviews on the Oakley website (where the glasses are NOT available) priase the sunglasses but recoi at the price.  The prize review is from a guy who bought some and then left them in MacDonalds.  Is there something wrong with that story.

Gaga About The Glasses…

All White Darlin'?

More pictures of the omnipotent Lady Gaga, this time in her Carrera ”Champion” sunglasses as featuring in her “Bad Romance” video.  She’s definitely earning her place in our “famous four eyes” leader-board (if we had such a thing).  See earier Specs/Gaga story…

I now see that Lady Lady Gaga has signed up with Polaroid as their “creative director and inventor of specialty products.”  More on that later…

She’s also quoted as wearing the upper-most-market Cutler & Gross specs - as featured in the Times On Line recently.