Designer Eyeglass of The Week

Badgley Mischka Couture Eyewear by Sama Debuts Four New Hot Couture Lenses in the Uber Popular “Perry Line — This Time in Triple Gradient Lenses

Brian Glascow at Sama just gave us a heads-up that Badgley Mischka Eyewear has just released four new Badgley Mischka”Perry” Sunglasses with custom, couture triple gradient lenses.

Halle Berry was the first to be spotted in the frames and lenses (Halle is wearing the “Sands” version and was also recently seen in a pair of Sama Meret), so we think the new Perrys will be this summer’s “IT” sunlasses.

The new triple gradient lenses offer enough “flash” to truly set these sunglasses apart, but are a bit more subtle than the 24K or 18K gold lenses on the Special Edition Gold Perry suns that have been seen on Angelina Jolie and Rihanna.

Here’s an exclusive peek at the new Perry sunglasses:

Badgley Mischka Gunmetal “Storm” Sunglasses

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Tom Ford Goes Super-Retro with the TF 5116 Eyeglass Frame

In the fashion industry, Tom Ford has built a name for himself as a designer who pushes boundaries, whether in his runway fashions at Gucci or in the racy promotional campaigns for Tom Ford Eyewear that got his advertising banned in Italy.

So it’s a bit surprising to see the former lead-designer at Gucci and now award-winning director of the critically-acclaimed movie “A Single Man” introduce so many retro-inspired eyeglasses into the current Tom Ford Eyewear collection.

Or maybe not.

Vintage-inspired fashion continues to be a major theme in spring and fall collections from Chanel, Lanvin, YSL and Dior, and Ford himself just finished directing a period-piece, so retro and vintage style eyewear is probably top of mind for Tom Ford.

Which brings us to our designer eyeglass of the week: The Tom Ford TF 5116.

This is another one of those Tom Ford eyeglasses that is screaming for the right face shape and attitude.

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The FT-5117 Women’s Eyeglass from Tom Ford Brings the Sexy Back in this Little, Sophisticated, Retro-Inspired Spectacle

One of the trends over the past year that we can’t get enough of is retro-inspired fashion and eyewear.

From cats-eye glasses, to heavier men’s frames with horned-rims, to the return of ’40s, ’50s and early-’60s-inspired oval shapes in women’s eyewear, retro continues to be extremely hot.

The great thing about retro-inspired eyewear and fashion is that their shapes, cuts and colors tend to be classical and enduring.

There’s a reason why vintage or vintage-inspired eyewear never really completely goes out of style: It works on a lot of different faces and can easily be matched to complement or contrast against a person’s own personal style.

One of our favorite retro-inspired women’s eyeglass frames is the FT-5117 from Tom Ford Eyewear.

Tom Ford doesn’t name his eyeglass models, choosing instead to use numbers versus words, so we usually end up developing nicknames around the shop to refer to different numbered models.  So the the Tom Ford FT 5117 is affectionately known around Urban Optiques as “that sexy librarian frame.”

Which pretty much describes this unique, half-moon acetate frame that’s meant to sit down just a tad on the bridge of your nose (or all the way down for that really smart, flirtatious-I’m-looking-over-my-reading-glasses-at-you-vibe.)

This frame feels like it’s straight out of a Mad Men episode:  Fuzzy sweaters, pencil skirts and all.

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