I’m not sure where I should even start with Lytot! I’d love to hear from anyone with a kid who wears these! Do you think they would be as practical as the website claims?

“Ahmed ZEKRI’s daughter once visited him in his frame factory. She then dropped her pacifier nearby a sunglasses. The concept of Lytot, assembling a pacifier and sun glasses, was born.

Her daughter, like many infant does not stand to wear sunglasses for more than few minutes. Most of the time kids feel uncomfortable with the temple or the neckband.
Eventually, he imagined sunglasses mounted on to a pacifier she will naturally wear giving her optimal protection.” – From Lytot’s site

[via Brillor]

Freja Beha Erichsen is also in this rather fine campaign:

Hot glasses action from Q-Tip (♥!!) and MNDR in the new Mark Ronson & The Business INTL video for Bang Bang Bang. I love MNDR’s style.

“WHERE’D YOU GET THEM GLASSES, GURL? Phoenix Optical in Oakland, California. The owner is a 40-year couture-eyewear designer. I became his buddy; he has 20,000 pairs of dead-stock and one-off eyewear.” – Read more about her glasses.

My friend Amber recently picked up her first ever pair of glasses. She chose a beautiful pair of Chloé frames from my favourite eyewear store in New Zealand, Occhiali.

They suit her so much. She looks gorgeous!

An interview with Jordan of Silver Lining Opticians:

Above The Clouds At Silver Lining Opticians from Jake Davis on Vimeo.

Chloe Sevigny X Open Ceremony X Barton Perreira. Patty Perreira tells me the glasses were inspired by Warhol Superstar Candy Darling. It sounds like you’ll have to wait until January to get your hands on them. So much awesomeness in one collaboration:

Napoleon’s Kryptonite

I never wanted to like anything from Paul Frank. My disdain began about ten years ago when I first saw a t-shirt proclaiming, “Paul Frank is your friend” (no he’s bloody not!) and then there was that awful monkey on everything… It just seemed so forced. I have to admit, though, that Baumvision’s eyewear collection for Paul Frank looks fantastic. Some are even named after songs that I like – there are pairs called Paper Planes and My Heart Rate Rapid.

Bye Bye Blues

You can buy them from Eye Society

I can’t believe I’ve never come across Labrabbit Optics before. Coyote DeGroot runs Labrabbit and specialises in super-special contemporary and vintage eyewear. He stocks some truly wonderful frames.

Labrabbit celebrates its first birthday this weekend and if you’re in Chicago, you should head to the party:

Not only does Coyote sell frames, he’s also fully qualified to fit them out with your prescription. Find out more in this Columbia Chronicle article from last November.

Thanks to Beth for sending this!

I adore this little bemonacled character, Darcel, the invention of New York-based Australian artist Craig Redman.

From his Twitter: “Sneak peek from next weeks show @coletteparis, made by the nicest gents in the world @toykyo”

At Paris-based boutique Colette:

Wearing Tom Ford glasses:

More:

• Juxtapoz interview with Craig
• Buy Darcel stuff online from Colette
• Colette bio
• Rinzen
• The Blackmail interview with Craig

“See Better to Learn Better” is a free glasses programme for kids that is run by Yves Béhar/fuseproject in partnership with the Mexican government.

Fuseproject are famous for designing the One Laptop Per Child XO, which is introducing computers to kids in developing countries. Now they’ve taken a similar approach to distributing eyewear.

This is so clever!

“Similar to the OLPC philosophy, we wanted to design products that are suited to the children’s specific needs, life and environment. The children receiving these glasses need frames that are durable, ergonomic and have key customization elements like shape and color that make wearing the glasses fun and personal.

Currently, the percentage of children in need of lenses at or above .75 correction, and can be as high as 60-70% in some schools in states like Morellos, Sonora and Chiappas. The average classroom need percentage is 11%. Additionally, the wearing of glasses is looked at as a handicap, this social stigma adds to the resistance to correct the problem.

To solve all of these challenges, we designed two part frames that are fully customizable with top and bottom colors that can be mixed and matched to fit all children’s personal choices. The innovative interchangeable nose pads let children with more petite noses wear the glasses comfortably. Through the use of the two part construction, 7 colors, 5 shapes and 3 sizes, these glasses can be swapped and adjusted in the field in order to update prescriptions.

At every school, we encourage students to create their very own pair of glasses with their favorite styles, size and color combinations. All this can be done through the special options catalogue, a fun and interactive way for kids to first encounter and chose their glasses.

The glasses are designed to be worn beyond the classrooms utilizing materials, advanced Gilamid plastic, with its hyper-flexible property, making them practically indestructible. Some fun in the soccer field? no problem.” From fuseproject’s site

The colourful modular nature of these glasses must make it so much more fun for the kids. I love it!

(via PSFK)

Wow, watching this ad makes me think that Specsavers are completely ignorant of the types of frames currently in favour. People love (and obsessively collect!) the Cazal-style glasses that the “dork” puts on in the end of this video. It’s hardly surprising that I walked into a Specsavers for the first time and found a rows-upon-rows of unimaginative little-rectangle-frames.

This is kind of related – eyewear giant Luxottica own retail chain OPSM in NZ and Australia and they recently conducted a survey. Here’s the press release with the results:

Glasses now more chic than geek

It seems that geek has truly become ‘chic’ with a new survey revealing some surprising statistics about New Zealanders attitude to glasses.

The online survey [The OPSM Style Review, Online Survey, February 2010], commissioned by OPSM and conducted by an independent research company, confirms that glasses are sexy and can even help when you’re applying for a job.

Six out of ten of those surveyed believe wearing glasses help improve your chances of getting a new job, and just over half of those surveyed believe colleagues take those who wear glasses more seriously.

Overall, glasses have class according to New Zealanders. Considering the appearance attributes of glasses, a solid 70 per cent or more of respondents think they make people look knowledgeable, likeable, professional, stylish, successful and trustworthy.

OPSM spokesperson Jason Dhana says the survey results speak for themselves.

“The survey clearly indicates the stigma attached to glasses is well and truly gone. A staggering 74% believe that glasses can make people look sexy – you would never have got a result like that ten years ago.”

On the fashion front, a massive 94 per cent of respondents agreed glasses are now more fashionable than ever.

“New Zealanders love their glasses and believe they can not only enhance their appearance, but job prospects too,” Jason says. “It’s exciting to see that people are now viewing glasses in a really positive light – they’re more stylish and popular than ever before.”

Results
The online survey was conducted by independent research company Stellar Market Research Pty Ltd in February 2010 among 482 respondents in New Zealand aged between 18 and 60+

• 60.6% believe wearing glasses helps improve employment chances
• 56.2% believe wearing glasses helps to make a better impression at a job interview
• 55.8% believe wearing glasses makes a positive first impression in the workplace
• 53.9% believe colleagues wearing glasses are taken more seriously
• 74.1% believe that glasses can make people look sexy
• 92.7% believe glasses are more stylish than they used to be
• More than 1 in 4 would consider wearing glasses as a fashion accessory, even if they didn’t need them to see
• 76.6% have noticed someone wearing glasses and thought how great they looked
• Glasses can make people look attractive (75.9%), authoritative (73.2%), confident (74.1%), creative (73.4%), credible (77%), hard-working (71.2), intelligent (78%), knowledgeable (77.2%), professional (78.2%), stylish (77.6%), trustworthy (73%) and successful (76.3%)

We don’t need your stinky statistics to know we’re smart and hot. So there!

If you know of any deserving boys in search of some new spectacles, these 3.1 phillip lim Donahue frames are the ones. I love the gold rim around the lenses and brow bar thingy (technical term, there!).

Unfortunately for most of us, they’re only available at the New York and L.A. Phillip Lim stores.

(via Selectism)