At Simon Eye Associates our patients are constantly asking us questions about how to choose Eyewear based on the clothes they wear, their body type, etc. To make it easier, we decided to post this article written by Eyewear Designer, Robert Marc.  Robert has been in the Fashion Eyewear business for many years, founding his own line in 1999.  Here’s what Robert had to say:

• Take your entire lifestyle into consideration. Don’t buy a casual style if you wear suits to work and dress up a lot for evenings.

• Pick a shape that contrasts with your face shape. If you have a round face, you don’t want a round frame. Try something more horizontal and angular.

• Look at scale and balance. Just as a size 10 wouldn’t buy a size 18 dress, a petite woman shouldn’t get an oversized frame.

• Don’t be afraid of making a mistake. Experiment and try on a lot of glasses. You might surprise yourself and discover a new look.

• You don’t wear the same pair of shoes to go to the gym, work and a cocktail party. At minimum, you should have two or three pairs of glasses in your wardrobe.

Vera Bradley Sunglasses

Many of us at Simon Eye Associates have been asked the age old question, what’s better, Contact Lenses or Glasses? And although the answer may seem very personal, one Musician may help clear that up for you.   The below article was published in the London Telegraph’s online edition Telegraph.co.uk.   It was written by concert pianist Stephen Hough.  It proves that whether you’re in Wilmington, Delaware, or London, England, people have the same problems with both.

I wear contact lenses most of my waking hours - minus 4.00 in both eyes.  It all started at the Juilliard School with a student recital I gave there at Paul Hall in the early 1980s.  I was wearing my usual nerdy glasses and was working up a sweat in the last movement of Prokofiev’s 6th sonata.  The last furious page tore along to the concluding, hammering chords: da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-DA!  I flung my head back on the last ‘DA‘ and my glasses flew back off my head, landing on the floor about ten feet behind me.  It was a gesture which could never have been planned, a perfect moment of extra-musical drama … except that, after a few princely bows, I had to get down on my hands and knees like a charlady, crawling along in search of them.  I quickly located them, shakily threaded them into place behind ears and on nose, and got up to walk off the stage to a mixture of applause and roars of laughter.  But then I realized that there was only one lens in the frame, the other had popped out with the impact.  So my first curtain call began with me bending down yet again to reclaim the missing but thankfully intact glass.

There was no repeating that humiliation, I had to get myself some contact lenses - and what a tremendous liberation they were when playing the piano.  No longer did I steam up or slip down - or shoot back.  But it’s not good to wear lenses all the time, and particularly for the first hour of the day when the eyes are dry and oxygen-deprived.  And I never wear them on flights longer than an hour.  So this morning I was cleaning my glasses in preparation for my 2-hour flight to Minneapolis from Nashville when they just broke.  The nylon thread invisibly holding the lower part of the lens in place snapped off and they were useless.  So my first task in Minneapolis tomorrow is to buy some new ones.  I wonder what style to go for?  These perhaps …

Do These Glasses Work For You?