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The Possibilities Are Endless
Friday, February 17, 2006

Shopping for eyeglasses is a tricky business. I should know, I’ve been wearing glasses since I was ten. Finding the right pair of glasses is difficult for many reasons. For one, there are thousands of styles out there: wire, plastic, rimless, half-rimmed, you name it. Every well known fashion designer has their own line. If it wasn't for my glasses, I would certainly never own anything by Kate Spade, unless it was a knock-off bag bought cheap on Canal Street.

Another consideration is how terrible my prescription is. Mine is bad enough that even though I have my lenses specially made to be thin, they're still kind of thick. As a result, I can't get wire rims or those funky new glasses that are basically just arms and a nose piece screwed directly into the lenses. So I have to go with plastic. That narrows my choice down to, oh, five billion frames.

Before I set foot in a store, I usually have a general idea of what I want. A few years ago I wanted cat-eyes. The next pair I went for were black, all purpose frames. This time, though, I wanted something fun. Something colorful. Something angular. Something edgy and rectangular. With that in mind, I went to two stores today.

My first stop was Sol Moscot on 14th street. I saw some funky red glasses, so I tried them on. Now this is where things got difficult. I couldn't see how they looked. I put them on, positioned my face three inches away from the mirror and squinted. It's like one of those pictures they have in a children's science magazine, where they take a super magnified close-up of something and say "Hey kids, guess what this is?" It's hard to figure it out, because you're that close. Something as familiar as a strawberry can look unidentifiable under that level of magnification. That's what it's like when I try on glasses. I have to be so close to the mirror, I can't tell what's going on with the rest of my face. This is when I have to rely on the salesperson, but the girl at Moscot's didn't seem too interested in being my seeing-eye clerk. Frustrated, I tried on five pairs before I left. The only conclusion I came to was that I red was not my color.

My next stop was Lenscrafters on 6th Avenue. I hadn't been in Lenscrafters for years. I had a bad experience with the one in King's Plaza years ago and I swore I'd never go back, but someone suggested them to me, so I figured I'd give it a go. I was in a forgiving mood. They had a lot of cool styles, and the clerk was okay with unlocking vast quantities of frames and leaving me to try on as many as I wanted, without hovering over me like a buzzard waiting for someone lost in the dessert to drop dead. The Lensecrafters I went to today was poorly designed for someone who can't see. The mirrors were mounted high on the wall, higher than someone of my height finds comfortable. It was sort of hard to lean in to see what I looked like, but I was able to eliminate most of the rectangular glasses because they were either too wide or not tall enough. I had a pair of glasses a few years ago that were very narrow, height-wise, and they were terrible. I constantly had to tilt my head up to see anything, which was especially annoying at the movies. My neck hurt all the time.

Then I thought I might have found the right glasses. They were green and rectangular, but they were also high enough that I wouldn't have to crane my neck to see anything above four feet. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell if they actually looked good on me. They looked pretty awesome in my hand, though. I asked the clerk to write down the model number, so when I dragged my husband back I could find them again and he could tell me if they looked okay.

"I wanted him to come with me today," I told the clerk as he jotted the info down, "but he was too busy watching 'The Sopranos' on his day off."

The clerk smiled and said, "Do you wear contacts? Because you could come back and try them on with them in."

"No I don't. Which is too bad, because it's really hard to see how they look, you know?"

Then it hit me. The most brilliant of ideas.

"Hey, I have my camera with me!" I almost shouted at the guy. "I'm gonna take a picture of myself and show my husband how they look when I get home!" I was way too excited about this scheme and the clerk kind of smiled at me like I was mildly learning disabled.

"That's a good idea," he said. "Good thing you had your camera with you."

I didn't bother to tell him I always carry it with me. I'd been lugging my camera around every day since 2001. You never know when there might be another horrendous terrorist attack in New York.

I took three pictures, which I look atrocious in, of course. But they came out well enough to see the green color of the frames and how well they fit, which is all I really wanted to know anyway. Kyle liked them and so do I, so I might go back tomorrow and get them.

I can't believe I've had the perfect eyeglass selecting tool right in my bag all those years, and I didn't even realize it.

posted at 10:22 PM . link to this post .

. (10) comments

10 Comments:

i like them.. very vogue!! i have question!! what happened to your store?? i wanted to order a mousepad!!! then when i clicked on it it goes to some generic menu... are they still available??

By Anonymous, at 2/18/2006 12:06 AM

Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out. Somehow an extra "s" got onto the end of the url and screwed it up. Here's the correct link.

By Angela, at 2/18/2006 12:23 AM

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

By Harlock, at 2/18/2006 2:18 AM

They go quite well with your eyecolor :D

My friend does something very similar, she brings a poloroid camera with her. Although her last pair was from 1950 something at an antique store

By Harlock, at 2/18/2006 2:18 AM

I like your choice of frames, but they would be nicer to look at with your real prescription in them. I think the rings around the edges of your lenses are a very attractive way to frame your eyes. By the way, do you know your prescription? Mine is -10 and yours looks a few diopters less.

By Nearsighted Emily, at 2/18/2006 9:38 PM

Harlock, here I thought I had such an innovation for eye glass shopping and you tell me you know someone else already thought of it! Jeez, way to pop my bubble. ;^)

Emily, I think I'm a -8.5 in one eye and -9 in the other. :^(

By Angela, at 2/19/2006 1:11 AM

He he, I'm sorry. If it makes you feel any better, she had a friend when she did it, so the solo camera taking is unique :D

By Harlock, at 2/19/2006 1:33 AM

[[[[[ I didn't bother to tell him I always carry it with me. I'd been lugging my camera around every day since 2001. ]]]]]]

I actually have a blog post somewhere in my archives called "Phony Cameras" that touches upon the idea that it's nice to have a camera with you at all times. Specifically, I was talking about how, for all the bitching I did about how stupid it is that cell phones now come with cameras, I found the use in that at least it affords the opportunity to always be able to take advantage of a good photo opportunity.

Granted, the pictures are HORRENDOUS and of extremely low resolution on my camera, so I think they're poor excuses for real cameras. But they are "better than nothing," and I guess that's the best thing I can say about them, qualitywise.

As for the glasses thing, it's a common problem with a pretty good solution. The biggest annoyance I have in this department is when I go for a hair cut, they make me take 'em off and then when they're finished, they say, "How does that look?" I always have to say, "I have no idea, as I can't see what it looks like. Let me put my glasses back on here..."

By Steve, at 2/19/2006 9:21 AM

I used to have a terrible time when I got my hair cut, party because I couldn't wear my glasses, thus I couldn't see what they were doing, and also because I have the crazy curly hair. I used to go to regular places like Supercuts, where they'd wash my hair, cut it like I had straight hair and then it would dry and the front pieces (which are a lot curlier than the rest of my hair) would shrink! Wretched. Now I spend a small fortune to get my hair cut at a place that specializes in curly hair. They cut it dry, which makes all the difference, though I still can't really see what my stylist is doing when I have my glasses off. But I trust him, so it's all good.

I never had a camera phone. I'm too cheap to get one, but they look fun. I'll have to look for your camera post on your site.

By Angela, at 2/21/2006 12:19 AM

I was totally too cheap to get a camera phone. Well, that and that I simply didn't want to pay for a feature that I didn't think I would every need. But I was looking to ditch my PDA (I never had it on me when I needed it) and find a phone that was syncable with iSync and the Apple Address Book. All the ones that were supposedly compatible also had cameras. So I whined and bitched about it, and then went ahead and bought it. And that's how I became a person with a camera phone.

By Steve, at 2/22/2006 9:10 PM