As a full-time glasses wearer — I can’t see without ’em — I’m always on the lookout for affordable ways to, well, see. I’ve fully embraced the fact that I won’t find prescription frames I want to wear for less than $100. (Yes, most Warby Parker glasses start at $95, but the good ones are usually $145.) There are workarounds, of course — I could buy vintage frames and pay to have the lenses replaced by a company like Lensabl, or simply buy cheaper glasses — but given the fact that I truly wear them every single second of every single day, I need pairs that’ll last.
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Most of the time, I wear Garrett Leight’s Naples frame, a square-shaped design made from acetate and finished with decorative palm leaf rivets. I have a matching pair with tinted lenses for when it’s sunny out. But the prescription pair set me back $355 dollars, and that’s just for the frames; it’s another $169 dollars at a Garrett Leight store (or more if I take them to an optometrist) for the prescription lenses. If I want a matching pair with sun protection, that’s $420 dollars, plus the $169 to be able to see out of them.
I’m not complaining, though, because I really do love my Garrett Leight glasses. They’re great — maybe even the best, for the price, in their category. But as much as I appreciate the consistency these offer me, sometimes I want to switch it up, and I can’t always justify spending $500 dollars to do so.
In lieu of pricier pairs, I’ve tried options from Zenni, a discount eyewear retailer endorsed — for money, of course — by Rashida Jones. For $34.95 with shipping, I received a cheap pair of acetate frames with equally cheap lenses. Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed. Then I found Yesglasses, a similar shop with glasses starting at $49. Surely they’d be similar to Zenni’s, I thought; passable but not a pair I’d ever want to wear every day.
But I was pleasantly surprised. The pair I ordered — simply called the 1477 — comes from Yesglasses’s new Tinted Sunglasses collection, a line with plenty of chunky acetate frames featuring decorative hardware and two dozen different colored lenses to choose from. I picked a simple pair: a horn-rimmed, Wayfarer-referencing rectangular pair with winged rivets and dark lenses.
