Guys now make passes at lasses in glasses

NEW YORK: In the 1953 film How to Marry a Millionaire, Pola, played by Marilyn Monroe, routinely walked into doors and mistakenly read books upside down in an attempt to disguise her near-sightedness.

"Men aren't attentive to girls who wear glasses," was Pola's excuse for not wearing her horn-rimmed specs.

Today, though, four-eyed fashionistas are receiving their fair share of attention, poor vision or not. Ashley Olsen, Amanda Peet, Chloe Sevigny, Rosario Dawson and Eva Longoria are just a few of the actresses who have recently been spotted in oversized, professorial eyeglasses.

And the nerd look also triumphed on the spring runways. At Dolce & Gabbana, for one, models sported geeky turquoise glasses and severe topknots a look that's usually more popular at your local branch library. In Paris, Balenciaga's Nicolas Ghesquiere dressed his girls in hefty square-rimmed frames that might do double duty in a high school chem lab. Miu Miu showed teeny glasses in bright colors, while models at Marc by Marc Jacobs wore graphic black or white versions.

So what accounts for this newfound embrace of eyewear? The accessory's popularity can be explained in part by its increasing superfluity. In this era of Lasik surgery and contact lenses, glasses come across as quirky and old-school. Retailers say that women are choosing to buy multiple pairs that reflect their personal style, rather than opting for a single, utilitarian model.

Designer Robert Marc uses the term "glasses wardrobe" to describe his customers' changing attitude toward opticals. "More people have come to the realization that eyewear is just as important of an accessory as shoes and handbags," he said. "Now, you see (fewer) people wearing one pair of glasses as their signature look."

Or as Richard Golden, founder and president of the national chain See Optical, so boldly puts it: "A woman should not wear the same pair of glasses to work every day." He estimates that his average customer buys three pairs a year, although some, he says, buy as many as eight. Retail prices range from $179 to $289 for the store's in-house brand.

According to Blake Kuwahara, creative director of Base Curve, which holds eyewear licenses for Carolina Herrera and John Varvatos, "The more modern thinking is, Look, I have 40 pairs of shoes. Why shouldn't I have at least two or three pairs of glasses?"

For fall, Kuwahara is noting a "return to femininity", with eyewear inspired by ready-to-wear. "Looks are decidedly feminine," he said, "with rounder silhouettes kind of that sexy secretary look." Base Curve's eyeglasses retail from $240 to $300 for John Varvatos styles and from $240 to $325 for Carolina Herrera ones.

At Safilo, director of product development Timm Parker, who supervises design for Marc Jacobs, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, Hugo Boss, JLo by Jennifer Lopez, Nine West and Liz Claiborne, notes that the optical field is still being driven mainly by metal frames.

"But we're beginning to see more plastics selling recently in some of the higher fashion brands a la Dior, Gucci, even in Kate Spade, and this has obviously been popular in sunglasses for several years now," he said.

Anthropologie has recently been doing a brisk business in reading glasses, a.k.a "readers". Currently, it carries various styles from four different brands: Eyebobs, A.J. Morgan, Glance and Melissa Eyewear. According to Sarah Wilson, the store's eyewear buyer, three of its top sellers include Eyebobs' Advert, a thick-framed tortoiseshell that retails for $58, and A.J. Morgan's Bunny and Cannes styles, both of which come in brightly colored plastic frames, for $28 each.

The biggest eyewear trend at the chain this season is toward a dominant frame, in part influenced by oversized sunglasses. Color is also gaining steam, with red, blue, pink, aubergine and lemon yellow as key shades.

"People definitely have fun with readers because no one has just one pair," noted Anthropologie's chief executive officer, Glen Senk, who owns about 20 pairs himself. "It's rare when people buy one style. Usually, they buy three or four."

Base Curve's Kuwahara perhaps puts it best: "In the past, there was that saying, 'Guys don't make passes at lasses in glasses'," he said with a laugh. "So women used to be afraid. (But now) they're finding that glasses can be quite sexy, and they can change up your look."

New York Times Syndicate

(China Daily 01/05/2007 page19)