photo by joshLately we've been sporting some clunky, thick-framed black glasses that would have been stylish in Hipsterville, oh 5-8 years ago. Luckily for us, this puts us right on the cutting edge of Engineeringdom. As a defense mechanism for coming off as some kind of hoity-toity downtown motherfucker, we postscript our responses to comments about them with "They were $40 online". It's a fact -- you can buy the same quality frames sold in stores easily for that much, including the lenses, coatings, and shipping. In this post we pass along our experiences on the subject.
If you want to buy glasses online, your first stop should be GlassyEyes, an absurdly well-maintained blog devoted to the subject. All of the reputable stores are listed, reviewed, and given discount codes here, and everything you need to know is compiled. So yeah, this post is pretty redundant given the wide array of info GlassyEyes provides. One of the 'tricky' things you have to do to buy glasses online is measure the distance between your pupils, which is helpfully explained here.
Another tricky thing is figuring out what frames will look good on you without trying them on. But when the glasses are so cheap you can obviously just buy a few pairs and wear the one that looks the best, reserving the others as backups. Our favorite frame was the Eta design from EyeBuyDirect, a style distressingly out of print. We even got them in prescription sunglass form, making the 30 daily minutes we are exposed to direct sunlight much less squinty. EyeBuyDirect, IOHO, has the best webpage design and most streamlined buying process.
We had more trouble buying glasses from Goggles4U, but our experience was ultimately a successful one. We correctly typed in our prescription into their purchase form, but received a pair that were not correct. (you shouldn't worry about unknowingly wearing the wrong prescription, because it is painfully obvious when you are) Goggles4U does not respond to emails, but we were able to get them on the phone (a drastic action for our phone-phobic generation). They told us to scan and email them the actual prescription and they would get back to us. They didn't get back to us, but when we called them again they were actually able to look up our email and sent us a new, correct pair free of charge.
Truth be told, our glasses are only about 70% as awesome as the $1200 pair we tried on at Morgenthal Frederics. But as long as we are not Masters of the Universe we might as well pay only $40 for a pair that would normally go for $200 in a store.
If you want to buy glasses online, your first stop should be GlassyEyes, an absurdly well-maintained blog devoted to the subject. All of the reputable stores are listed, reviewed, and given discount codes here, and everything you need to know is compiled. So yeah, this post is pretty redundant given the wide array of info GlassyEyes provides. One of the 'tricky' things you have to do to buy glasses online is measure the distance between your pupils, which is helpfully explained here.
Another tricky thing is figuring out what frames will look good on you without trying them on. But when the glasses are so cheap you can obviously just buy a few pairs and wear the one that looks the best, reserving the others as backups. Our favorite frame was the Eta design from EyeBuyDirect, a style distressingly out of print. We even got them in prescription sunglass form, making the 30 daily minutes we are exposed to direct sunlight much less squinty. EyeBuyDirect, IOHO, has the best webpage design and most streamlined buying process.
We had more trouble buying glasses from Goggles4U, but our experience was ultimately a successful one. We correctly typed in our prescription into their purchase form, but received a pair that were not correct. (you shouldn't worry about unknowingly wearing the wrong prescription, because it is painfully obvious when you are) Goggles4U does not respond to emails, but we were able to get them on the phone (a drastic action for our phone-phobic generation). They told us to scan and email them the actual prescription and they would get back to us. They didn't get back to us, but when we called them again they were actually able to look up our email and sent us a new, correct pair free of charge.
Truth be told, our glasses are only about 70% as awesome as the $1200 pair we tried on at Morgenthal Frederics. But as long as we are not Masters of the Universe we might as well pay only $40 for a pair that would normally go for $200 in a store.
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