I needed to get new glasses and I spent a month looking in stores (Lenscrafters and like) and the regular online sites (eyebuydirect, etc) and could not find anything particularly interesting. Everything looks so similar. What are good glasses?
I did go into an expensive glasses place at The Fancy People’s Mall just to see what those kinds of glasses are like and 1) man, people can spend a lot of money on frames, 2) some of these designs are kind of different but I don’t see why people aren’t mass producing these kinds of designs at regular glasses stores, and 3) I did actually find one pair of frames there that I liked. Which is unfortunate because it was, after all, an expensive glasses place at The Fancy People’s Mall.
I eventually decided to splurge on myself and buy an expensive pair of frames for myself just so my search can be over. My plan was to turn my current frames into prescription sunglasses, but I took them to a glasses store and they found that my frames are cracked. I don’t know how long for the world these frames are. Now I’m back on the search again, this time for something that can work as sunglasses.
Where do you buy glasses? Where can I find interesting glasses? Is there anything that is interesting and affordable? I used to do online from places like Eyebuydirect, but I’d recently read that high prescriptions like mine tend to be more prone to error when ordering online, which might explain some weirdness with my older glasses.
I generally get mine from this site that a coworker told me about a few years ago, and I’ve been happy with the prices and styles. (Disclaimer: I know nothing whatsoever about fashion.)
I wear some oliver peoples gregory peck keyhole style dupes off aliexpress for like 15 bucks, and i think they look good. you should be able to get your prescription installed for like another $25 or so, and it was delivered to me in the states in less than 2 weeks.
my other favorite pair were some designer browline frames in titanium, and they’re a lot lighter and more comfortable than acetate glasses, but quite pricey.
i might try my luck with some of the titanium dupes on aliexpress next lol
fwiw I think not-particularly-interesting glasses are usually wise if only because they have to match everything you ever wear. If you have really distinctive glasses they become the gravity well that sucks in the rest of your style. You become That Guy, With Those Crazy Glasses.
That said they don’t have to be dead boring. I have a blue and brown tortoiseshell pattern that I think is subtle but swell.
Unfortunately I have good enough insurance thru my wife these days that I can just buy the disgusting artificially inflated glasses from your lenscrafters and so forth, but back in the day I ordered a couple pairs from coastal.com that were reasonably priced and perfectly fine. Looks like that redirects to eyebuydirect now, so.
Also since frames are (incomprehensibly) so much more expensive than lenses, if you are skeptical about your prescription being adequately fulfilled by correspondence, you can always buy cheap but decent frames on the internet and then go to lenscrafters etc and have them fit them with lenses. Kind of a 50/50 deal that will still save you money.
My original plan was to buy frames online and get lenses locally, to avoid any lens issues with my high prescription, but Lenscrafters was quoting me $500 plus for lenses alone (I’ve already used my insurance for lenses this year, so I can’t use it again.). I’m going to check out a My Eye Dr. location later today to see their pricing, and then maybe try some other optometry places and see how much they vary. The Fancy Eyeglasses place i went to was estimating the price of their fancy Carl Zeiss brand name lenses for less than whatever Lenscrafters quoted me for theirs. The eyewear industry is wild.
Dupes off aliexpress is an idea I’ve never heard of before. I’ve never used aliexpress. Anything worth knowing about buying frames off there? I heard some places won’t install prescription lenses if the quality of the frames are too low. How real of a risk is that?
Apparently this is the kind of stuff people pay over a grand for.
Most glasses are manufactured and sold by a gigantic evil company called Luxottica. They own all the big US retail chains/online stores and all the different fancy brands and stuff are literally just the same company. I buy glasses from a company called Moscot mostly because they are not that, they still aren’t like 100% my vibe though. I guess warby parker is independent too but they are absolute 0% my vibe. I still tried to be a good sport and try one of their sample packs but hated them all on my face. Zenni is good too, that’s where I get all my prescription sunglasses
seriously consider laser eye if you’re eligible and you’re locked into paying inflated glasses prices because it only costs as much as like four expensive-ish pairs
I had actually looked into it a few years back and was reading it’s common for laser eye recipients to get the same kinds of light flares at night that I think I get when I wear contacts. I don’t know that could put up with that all the time and I like being able to not have to have those sometimes by switching to glasses. But now that you mention it, you’re right that in the long term it’s probably more cost efficient. I already have dry eyes though. I wonder if laser eye surgery would make that even worse.
For those of you who are ordering online, what prescription do you all have, if you don’t mind my asking. Mine is -8.50 with I think high astigmatism. I’ve been reading that level of needs means your lenses need a good level of precision or you’ll have issues with your glasses, and so the guesswork online sites have to do to figure out where your eyes will be positioned by the lens can make it more prone to problems. Do any of you have high prescriptions like that when ordering online?
i’ve used zenni, warby parker, and some other cheapo online eyeglass place. i kinda go through them because i tend to be careless about eyewear and they get really dirty from work. so my latest pair are some military surplus BCG (birth control goggles) from ebay. they are definitely the must rugged and have lasted me the longest. they are also the cheapest by far. the frames were 12 with shipping and my partner’s insurance covered the cost of putting in the lenses. warby parker glasses lasted me the longest, but i don’t know, i think my head grew or they shrunk or something because they started to look very small on me after a year or two. i think that, if you’re kinda careless like me, warby parker is worth the extra price over the zenn/cheapo stuff. the latter have always been flimsy and would lose their screws all the time.
i don’t have as high of a prescription as you, but i wouldn’t trust zenni with it, personally. just because the hassle of sending it back if it’s not right or whatever is more annoying to me than just walking into a store near me.
I found a lot of cool frames when I went looking for new glasses last year, but in the end I couldn’t get any of them because I have kind of a strong rx and my lenses are too heavy for most frames!!! That might be why most frames are boring.
Dang that sucks. Would they be usable if you paid for the hi-index lenses that are thinner? Or would they be too heavy even then? I was at a glasses store today and was told I have to watch for the size of the frames I get because of its too large then the frame won’t support my prescription, even at 1.74 hi-index.
But shout outs to the optician at MyEyeDr. who looked over his shoulder every time to make sure his coworkers weren’t listening before telling me what lens options were and weren’t worth paying for.
Nuts, I’m almost there myself. I guess I need to enjoy my glasses while I can.
These are the new glasses I got. These are much more wild than anything I’ve worn before (regular looking black rectangle frames, with some red on the legs). It’s like a dark teal on the fronts with a mustard yellow on the top, bottom, and insides. With a hexagonal shape. When looking straight at it, you mostly just see the real and the yellow is just slightly there as a border accent. It’s a neat effect.
My face really likes raybans which are part of the luxottica monstrosity so I mumble something about no ethical consumption and pay the cashier while full of shame
The fancy glasses store I went too was very proud of how most everything in their store was made in Japan. They were saying Japanese made frames are the best.
I have seen this site. Have you taken their anime quiz to see what type of anime glasses you are?
I’ve also been looking at Jins glasses, which is also a Japanese brand but more for the +$100 range. I actually kind of like a couple of their Naruto-collab glasses, but I wish I could get them without as much of the obvious Naruto branding (granted a lot of them look like regular glasses but with Naruto branding in the inside of the glasses where no one will ever see them, which feels like it eliminates the point of this kind of cross-promotion).
