Take a look at Title 21, Chapter 1, Subchapter H, of the Food and Drug Administration’s Code of Federal Regulations. All right, don’t. The crux of it is that eyeglasses, officially speaking, are medical devices. Compared with other apparatuses in this family, they are the dapper uncle, rakish aunt, and hipster cousin. Vision correctors, worn at least part time by 75.7 per cent of American adults, can be big, brash, early Eltonish or giddy Dame Ednoid, but they can also be staunchly studious, making their Poindexterous points with thick clear plastic or insinuating their Joycean intellect with fine curved wire. “You can say a lot with eyewear without saying anything,” a saleswoman at Solstice Sunglass Boutique (500 Fifth Avenue, at 42nd Street) told me, showing me a pair of beige Dior cat’s-eye shades with peach-colored temples ($275). Sensing that I was not fluent in the language of ultraviolet protectors, she translated: “I”m elegant, feminine, and mature.” Indeed, your eyeglasses might end up having more personality than you. This cannot be said for dental fillings or defibrillators.
May I confess that, after surveying thousands of eyeglasses, I would still find it tricky to pick out a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers in a police lineup that included analogous versions offered by other designers (Sunglass Hut, 2218 Broadway, at 79th Street; $145-$195)? The trapezoidal Wayfarer, originally issued in 1952, is said to be the best-selling sunglass style in history. However, my inability to distinguish one brand from another, even when wearing my prescription glasses, applies to other lens geometries as well. Could the following little-publicized detail, I wonder, explain the sameness across the industry? The Italian firm Luxottica, the world’s largest eyewear company, owns Ray-Ban, Persol, Oakley, and Oliver Peoples (among other labels), and has licensing agreements to create and distribute frames for a bunch of big-deal houses—Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Prada, Tiffany, Versace, Club Monaco, and Anne Klein, for starters. Also under Luxottica’s purview are the retailers LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sunglass Hut, Target Optical, and Sears Optical, as well as EyeMed Vision Care, which is one of the country’s major vision-care providers.
“Luxottica is doing what the banks did—buying up companies,” Stanton Blackmer, the co-proprietor of an eyewear shop called Fabulous Fanny’s, told me. (A Luxottica spokesman said that independents still hold a larger share of the market than any of the major players.) “Luxottica is the root of all evil in the broken American optical industry,” the Web site suxottica.com, which is unhappy about brand consolidation, alleges, noting that the devil, er, chairman, Leonard del Vecchio, is one of the richest men in the world (No. 59 on the Forbes billionaires list).
So what’s hot in hell? Prada’s skinny-framed rectangular tortoiseshells are smart, even if they do resemble a similar Chanel model (at LensCrafters, 542 Fifth Avenue, at 45th Street, for $270; and at eyeweartown.com for $298). For the record, both are plastic. It has been illegal to turn the carapace of the endangered hawksbill sea turtle into fashion since 1970.
They shoot buffalo, don’t they? I couldn’t bring myself to find out, but I did learn from a saleswoman at Morgenthal Frederics (944 Madison Avenue, near 75th Street) that the material used in its “buffalo-horn frames” comes from the skulls of Asian water buffalo that are hunted primarily for meat and skins. For the squeamish, the paisley-shaped mock-tortoise frames with green enamel swirls make a loud statement, and not just about your credit rating ($1,595).
To all young chickens, rhesus monkeys, guinea pigs, marmosets, tree shrews, and fish: Stay away from Josh Wallman, a biologist at City College, and his colleagues. In the name of science, these researchers like to place spectacles on your kinfolk, causing them to be nearsighted or farsighted (anti-fog UV-coated canine glasses at doggles.com; $12.99-$19.95).Wallman explained that within weeks, or even days, the eyes of these critters had changed to compensate for the visual distortion. Could ocular plasticity explain why adults who read a lot as kids tend to have poor eyesight? Or why, according to Margaret Livingstone, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School, the incidence of myopia (nearsightedness) among Inuit was not significant until after missionaries taught them to read? The short answer is maybe. Livingstone explained, “A baby’s eyes start out farsighted and, as they develop, gradually change shape to achieve perfect focus. If they overshoot, you become nearsighted.” But here’s the important part: you don’t have to listen to your mother when she tells you not to read comic books two inches from your nose, sit too close to the TV, live in a cave, or hang around Josh Wallman.
Aside from eighth-century Egyptian hieroglyphic depictions of “simple glass meniscal lenses,”the history of eyeglasses belongs to Italy. In the early years of the first century, the philosopher Seneca supposedly read all the books in Rome by viewing them through a glass globe of water that enlarged the lettering on the pages. According to Pliny the Elder, the Emperor Nero used to watch gladiatorial games by holding an emerald to his eye, either because the gem filtered the sunlight or because he was myopic, or maybe because Nero was pulling Pliny’ s leg. Who had the bright idea of riveting together two quartz “reading stones” with a bridge, thereby inventing the pince-nez? It’s a mystery, although some historians trace the inspiration to Pisa, based on a reference to “occhiali” in a sermon written by a Pisan monk in 1306. By the fifteenth century, craftsmen in Florence had become the world’s leading manufacturers of spectacles, turning out different powers of lenses—so named for their resemblance to lentils. Demand for magnifiers was spurred by the advent of the printing press, but vision aids during this period weren’t just for very wealthy readers. Glasses were so cheap and plentiful that even lowly Renaissance artisans could afford to buy lots of pairs. And lose them. (A retrospective of Italian eyewear dating from the thirteenth century is on view until March 24th at Vanderbilt Hall, in Grand Central Terminal.)
Along Madison and Fifth Avenues is an opulence of spectacle shops that call to mind doctors’ offices that sell jewelry—especially if you define a doctor as someone who says, “Spike Lee just bought six pairs of these.” The salesclerk gushing over how those graceful Lafont ovals flatter your face is an optician, and, despite two years of school or on-site training, is not permitted by New York State to examine your eyes (H. L. Purdy, 1171 Madison Avenue, at 86th Street; $310). The training and the privileges of an eye-care specialist are commensurate with the number of syllables in the name of her profession. A step up the career ladder is the optometrist, who, having earned a four-year optometry-school credential, is authorized to fit corrective lenses, detect pathologies, and prescribe eye medicine. An ophthalmologist is an M.D., and thus can perform surgery and have bad handwriting. On the other hand, the person in the shop who’s least able to see clearly right now is you, so maybe the optician is right—those Polo circular wire frames you’re trying on don’t make you look like an elderly raccoon at all ($230). Does your cell phone have a camera?
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