With regards to our frames and sunglasses, we only stock products that are totally genuine, direct from the frame manufacturers in Italy. Like the manufacturers themselves we know that it’s in the interests of ourselves, the brand, the Optical industry and the vital clients to only use authentic product. Forgeries will be of inferior quality, using weak materials and possibly endangering the wearer. With specs this may mean skin allergies, lost lenses and uncomfortable frames.

In practice, we never accept frames which are not genuine. They are destroyed by manufacturers if they reach them to have new lenses or parts fitted, so be warned if you take a fake Oakley or RayBan to an Optician to have a screw or side arm replaced! They always spot them even if we don’t, and there are some very convincing reproductions out there. Always buy from a reputable stockist, check that the cases, cloths and logos are correct – a Ray ban spelled Ray Burn is a bit of a give away!  Note that if you wear dark sunglasses lenses which are not authentic, they’ll probably have no UV protection. The dark lens will allow light to flood into your unprotected eye and over time will cause damage to the retina and crystalline lens within the eye.

This year the Italian Association of Optical goods manufacturers are cracking down on counterfeits. They have strong interest in this problem as the vast proportion of Designer frames sold in Europe are from Italian design houses and factories. July 7^th was the first national Anti-Counterfeiting day, and 5000 forged frames were crushed by a road roller as a symbol of their work. We welcome any move to stop the trade in counterfeit goods which will safeguard our business and the health of our patients.

One of the biggest changes that clients often comment on is how light frames are nowadays, often with a comment of ‘aren’t they flimsy?’ and you can see the dread in people’s eyes as they imagine the damage they can do to their precious new specs! The difference is often most apparent when you’re trying frames on, as they don’t have the weight of prescription lenses in them. So always remember when you’re browsing new glasses that they will be a little heavier with your lenses glazed into them. Thankfully not vastly heavier in most cases, but they do feel far more substantial with optical quality lenses in.

Despite the weight of lenses however, frames have become lighter over the years – if only the same could be said of us!! Materials are constantly evolving to make frames as slim as possible, while still retaining their strength. Manufacturers are now able to produce materials that are more flexible than of old, so they give and bounce back when you sit on them! Older materials needed bulk to make them tough, but this made them thicker and heavier, and more likely to snap. Metals such as stainless steel, Titanium and Monel are springy and super light, and can be pared down to minimal thickness. They feel as if they’re hardly on your face, reducing discomfort when you’re wearing them all day every day.

Fittings and fixings have become tougher yet lighter too, with joints and nose pads getting less bulky and obtrusive. But we still see less and less repairs every year so they must be tough enough to cope with the fast pace of our lives. So embrace this change for the better and trust in the technology of new materials and construction – lightweight is good we promise!

Fast forward a few years, and the old NHS frame is now rather trendy, thanks to David Tennant, and my teenage son almost looks impressed by the old photos of me in them. It wasn’t the end of the world when he was told he needed specs, as plenty of his friends wear them and actually like their glasses. He also gets far more choice, as thanks to internet providers and the wide range offered by opticians he can pick glasses which are trendy and actually cool!

He wears contact lenses everyday, as they are much more practical for all his sporting activities. I bought him a couple of really well priced specs off the internet as spares, useful to give him a break from his lenses and to wear during a nasty bout of conjunctivitis. His NHS voucher was used towards his lenses, so browsing web sites and getting him some specs cheaply helped soothe the household budget, suffering a battering from trainers and designer jeans!

Specs no longer suffer the stigma that they had in my youth, although the dread of picking a new pair never leaves me. My son seems very laid back about his short-sightedness, and I’m grateful that something as simple as a nice and economical trendy frame has spared him the trauma that I had. Now where did I hide my geeky NHS brown frames? Might just get my new varifocals put in them!!

I had reading glasses, and after a nightmare meeting when I ended up with a raging headache and very tired arms when I forgot my specs, I started keeping one pair at work, one at home, and one in the car just in case! Then I started to need help for the computer, and couldn’t really see the dash board clearly either. This meant another pair of computer specs for work, one for home, and one for the car! This worked until I’d go home with the work pair in my bag etc and then end up with all of them in the wrong location! Then of course there were my sunglasses, which I wore for driving, but still couldn’t see the dashboard.

Exhausted by all of this, and fed up with my worn out glasses that got squashed in handbags and were constantly bent, I went back to talk to the optician again. I still didn’t need glasses for distance sight, but we decided that the time had come to go for varifocal specs. The advantage for me was huge – one pair of glasses that I could leave on all the time, so they wouldn’t get worn out or left anywhere. I could also have them going dark in the sunshine, so instead of seven pairs of specs scattered around my life, I had one pair that I could keep on for all situations!

This was life changing! My varifocals let me see to drive, at the computer, the dashboard, and all my close up vision. I don’t have to take them off and they’re always with me. The lens goes dark so I don’t need sunglasses, and they are clear when I’m indoors. The lenses looked expensive when I first got a quote, but of course they were less than my vast collection of specs and look an awful lot nicer!

Some of the most common problems that consumers have with glasses boils down to the same cause time and time again. It’s not the product or the optician’s prescription that means people aren’t happy with their glasses – it’s their expectations against what the specs actually do. So let’s try and repair this communication breakdown …………

My new reading glasses are really good for reading the newspaper but now I can’t see the Computer – what’s gone wrong?

This often crops up when people have their second or third new reading power. We first know we need help for reading because our arms get too short! We find we have to hold things further away to see small print. Reading glasses help you to see fine detail again, at a comfortable distance. Every time it’s strengthened, small print gets closer again, but you do reach a point when your eyes change a little more and the arm’s length or computer distance isn’t clear with reading specs any more. You need a separate strength for the screen, or Varifocals, which let you see everything at any distance.

I’ve been putting my new Varifocals on and off for a month and they’re still not comfortable, I feel much better in my old glasses.

We all need time to adjust with a new prescription or type of lens, but usually it only takes a week or two. The key to getting used to new specs is actually putting them on and keeping them on – don’t switch between old and new lenses. This will make the adjustment period longer. You might feel a bit odd for a day or two, but persevere with the new lens and soon you’ll forget you’ve got them on!

I had thin lenses but you can still see them outside the edge of the frame. So what’s the point of them?!

The issue here is the patient expectation of just how ‘thin’ is thin! There is a choice of materials which reduce the lens thickness, but many different factors affect the final look of a lens. The distance between your eyes, the strength of the lens, and the frame size all have an impact on the thickness. Thinner materials reduce thickness by up to 50%, so will always be an improvement on a standard lens, but with really high lens powers we can’t promise to disguise the lens edge fully.

The way to avoid these disappointments is to ask your optician or online optician as many questions as possible before ordering, and go back to them if you’re not happy with your glasses. Sometimes we can improve what you’ve got, or suggest alternatives that will help you.

Firstly, metal frames are more comfortable in Summer than plastic, as the nose pads sit the frame away from the skin and allow some air flow behind it. This prevents misting up and the small contact area of the nose pads on your skin means you perspire less. So put your plastics away in the hottest temperatures and if you’re thinking of investing in new glasses at the moment, look for a metal pair. A small size will help too – small lens area means less weight and less slipping.

Your glasses might need to be fitted slightly tighter over the warm months, and if you’re up to any energetic sports you could invest in an elastic sport band which will hold them in place. Specialist frames like Oakley have end tips on the side arms which actually get slightly tacky as you get hot, holding them firmly in position.

We all know that we need at least an SPF factor of 15 on our skin, and the face is especially vulnerable to sun damage. Heavy lotions might make your specs slip, so experiment with different formulae and allow them to settle before putting your specs on. In the evening, wash your glasses in warm soapy water, and dry on a soft towel or tea towel. This prevents damage to the frame from the lotion and your perspiration. Wash them as soon as possible after wear – don’t leave them overnight or a build up of damaging deposits will start to eat into the frame material.

A few sensible precautions will ensure you are more comfortable and your specs stay in place, so enjoy the sun and don’t make any slip-ups!

It’s all very well to fall in love with a frame and be happy with the colour, shape and size, and for many patients with simple prescriptions the decision is easily made just because you like the looks of the frame. But it can get complicated if you choose a very curved or a very big frame, because the annoying rules of Physics prevent us from making up any old lens power in any size or curve!

Specs for sport or sun wear sometimes lead a client to choose a very wrap-around or very large size frame, and ask us to glaze it with their prescription lenses. This is a situation where form and function requires careful thought. The dispensing optician who helps you to make your mind up on the frame and lens combination needs to consider your prescription, the size of your face, the detailed measurements of the frame and the amount of curve. So if you can’t always have your first choice of frame there is a good reason for it! We always do our best to work with the patient to give them what they want, but sometimes the frame will simply not suit a prescription lens. Lens power gives the lens a specific curve, and this may not fit within the frame. Or the wrap of the frame may give rise to distortion at the edges, which is uncomfortable and possibly even dangerous if you’re driving or cycling in them and need to be perfectly aware of upcoming vehicles in your peripheral vision. We may need to order specialised curved lenses or source an alternative frame for you. Consideration of your requirements and careful selection will give you a form of lens that fulfils your required function perfectly.

For perfect sight, light has to enter the eye and focus on the back surface. If your eyeball is too long, you’ll be short sighted. If it’s too short, you’ll be long sighted. Specs or contact lenses position the light in the right place so you can see clearly. If the curve of your cornea, the clear window at the front of the eye, is imperfect, then this will also create a problem with focussing.

Light enters the eye through the pupil, the black hole at the centre of the eye. It travels through the crystalline lens, a transparent structure that changes shape to let us see both close up and far away. Muscles hold the lens in place and stretch and relax to alter its shape and therefore its focus. If the lens is not the perfect size and shape then this will add to the visual defect of the eye. So you can see that there are several reasons why you may need glasses or contact lenses.

Once your optical system has been corrected and is working as it should, light reaches the light sensitive layer, the Retina, which lines the back of the eye. Here the image we see is upside down and in reverse! It travels to the brain through the optic nerve, where thankfully it’s put the right way round.

Ophthalmologists and opticians are lucky in that they’re the only clinicians who can examine their specialist organ without cutting their patient open! Thanks to ever advancing screening equipment and retinal imaging systems we can see inside your eyes and spot the very first signs of problems. This fantastic and beautiful system works on our behalf for every minute of our waking day, so look after it by attending your check ups and taking a few minutes to appreciate and maintain it.

Wearing glasses, or not wearing your glasses, won’t alter your sight in the long term. There are some studies to suggest that’s children’s sight can be improved with specialist lens types, but at present there’s no evidence to suggest that your correction will actually make your sight better or worse. If you don’t wear them, in the short term you’ll suffer from eye strain as you try to focus. Squinting to thread a needle or read a book will be at best uncomfortable, at worst will leave you with a nasty headache. So don’t be afraid to wear your glasses! Listen to your Optician’s advice and wear them when you need them, especially if you’re illegal to drive without them!

If you’re under the age of forty, your eyes will do the work for you in focussing close too and far away. You only need one prescription for both. For most prescriptions you’ll be perfectly fine wearing your spex all the time. If you’re short sighted, as you get near to age forty, you’ll be more comfortable taking your specs off for close work. In this case not wearing your glasses will save eye strain. If you’re long sighted you’ll start to find that you need extra magnification for close work at this point.

After age forty-ish, you need help to focus close-up, regardless of what your sight was like before this point. So if you had no prescription before this, you’ll find yourself putting specs on and off when you need to read and then look up. You could have a varifocal with no power at the top of the lens, just your close and middle distance magnification. It’s fine to wear the varifocals all through the working day if it suits your lifestyle not to have to keep taking reading specs on and off.

Trust your optician and your own common sense when it comes to the best times to wear your glasses, and the important thing is don’t suffer in trying to cope without them.

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If you’re an English Rose, with pale skin that has cool blue undertones, then you can take a dramatic frame in strong, clear, bright colours. Blue-red, black, silver, cold purple will all make your eyes glitter and will draw attention away from fine wrinkles on your delicate skin.

If your skin is fair but warm, with a Californian sun-kissed gleam, you need honey, gold and butterscotch brown tones to add a golden glow and set your skin ablaze with Autumn colouring. Reds for you should veer more towards the orange end of the spectrum. If you want something neutral then look for a tan brown or a khaki green. These colours won’t wear you – people will focus on your eyes, not the frame.

If you have a dark or tanned complexion you can take strong colours that will stand out against your sultry skin. Black and white will be a knockout, warm orange and lime will zing and make the whites of your eyes shine out. Hot orange-toned-red and fuchsia pink will pop and look incredible on delicious dark skin.

Olive skin, which is warm in tone, can take all those subtle tones that pale skins can’t. Your red should be yellow based, but you look stunning in all tone of khaki, rich brown and darker shades of the Autumn palette. You’ve probably got dark eyes, and you’ll know you’ve found the perfect colour because gold tones in your eyes will be enhanced.

When you’re trying new frames, look at yourself in natural daylight, and girls, try them with and without make up so you can examine your skin tone. If you have a cool complexion try them when you’re wearing black or white, warm complexions should try them with cream or brown. These basic background colours will allow you to focus on the effect on your face. Are your eyes alight? Do your teeth look white? Is it highlighting shimmers in your eyes or hair? When you find the one, your whole face will come into sharp focus, and not just through your shining new lenses!