Many opticians have long allowed customers to take a few pairs of frames home with them, so that the customer can seek the opinion of friends and family, or take a little longer to decide what suits them best.
All of that seems pretty old-fangled, now that you can take photos of frames in-store using your mobile, post the pictures online and get an opinion before you even leave the shop.
This month, two women I know went the take-home-and-post-online route. Sarah-Rose wanted some new glasses, so she took a poll on her site, as did Joanna of NZ-based beauty site PrettyPrettyPretty.com. It’s a great idea, even if both of my choices fetched the fewest votes!
Glasses Direct have gone a step further with their Virtual Mirror, where you can see a picture of the frames super-imposed on a photo of your face. If that’s not enough to help you decide, they will send you a few pairs to try on for a small postage fee.
Last week, Sunglass Hut and Claw Money launched a pair of colourful, aviator-inspired sunglasses. In-store at Sunglass Hut, customers can try on the glasses, using their Social Sun photobooth, and instantly upload the result to Facebook. (via PSFK)
Cory Kennedy has lots of photos of the photobooth.
I wished for something like that today while in the fitting room trying on jeans!
I polled people in real life too with the options (two cafe staff, two cafe customers, three people at work, two people at drinks, two people at dinner and two people at home) and they had the advantage of seeing that the black ones actually fit me the best. I liked the fancy-leg ones but I’m likely to be wearing fancy-pants jewellery and makeup so I had to consider that in making my decision! For most people (not you!), they generally only have one pair of glasses and they wear them all the time, so I think it’s important to get as wide an opinion as possible, but of course you gotta go with your gut (or budget!) in the end.
Eep. That’s my face! that was a surprise. Hee.
I think the ones you like best do remind me a lot of your style. I tend to wear chunkier frames while yours tend to be funkier. Unintended rhyme!!