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Have you ever experienced heartbreak at the opticians? Frames catch your eye from across the shop floor. Maybe it’s love at first sight, or the culmination of a slow-burning love affair with a particular brand, color or style. However, the love soon turns to disenchantment… The frames are too big, or too small. They’re either too tight or they keep slipping. They don’t come in any other color… And it’s even worse if you only realize this after a few weeks of wearing them. The honeymoon is over, you’ve fallen out of love and you’re entirely unsuited to each other. The problem is, you bought them. You could keep on experiencing disappointment until you realize that, when it comes to finding your perfect eyewear, there’s nothing quite like custom-made glasses.
Up to now, only your lenses were made to measure, and naturally so, as they’re made to your prescription and your requirements: Want anti-glare coating? Need blue light protection? Or maybe you’d like polarized lenses for your sunglasses? The list goes on… For frames, though, there used to be fewer options, with no choice of bridge size, hinges, or material. And if they weren’t available in your favorite color, well, you had to put up with it or make do with another style!
Whether you know exactly what you want in a pair of glasses, have a penchant for the unconventional, or are simply intrigued by the idea, you now have the option of custom-made eyewear. And if you have to have the glasses of your dreams or nothing, you’ll be delighted to find that you can choose the main features as well as those tiny details that make all the difference.
Bespoke eyewear is not just the preserve of spectacle manufacturers, although they were of course among the first to take it up and offer it to opticians and to glasses-wearers. With their range of technical expertise and their feel for design, they are well placed to create comfortable, original, tailor-made eyewear. After all, there are many people who want to enjoy the benefits of made-to-measure glasses and the personality of their favorite brand.
Then there are the opticians. In direct contact with customers, they are first to see trends and needs as they emerge. Many of them also make spectacles, creating their own frames.Then there are the opticians. In direct contact with customers, they are first to see trends and needs as they emerge. Many of them also make spectacles, creating their own frames.
From there, it’s just a short step to offering custom-made eyewear, and it’s one that many of them have taken, with the help of some of the training that’s available to them. Their role as advisers means that opticians are well qualified to go beyond just taking measurements. Many of them now offer a range of personalized eyewear that truly reflects wearer needs and preferences.
Taking measurements, though, is still the preserve of another profession that it’s less easy to imagine has a role in the optics industry: developers. While the traditional tools for taking measurements are still in use, more and more people are adopting 3D modeling. This is where these programmers come in: Their skills mean they can develop software capable of taking facial measurements and recreating them in three dimensions.
While all these professionals have their part to play in made-to-measure frames, there are still some who wear multiple hats. Today, it is entirely possible for an optician to learn development skills or for a developer to switch to eyewear. There are no hard and fast rules, and thank goodness for that: art and technology demand flexible thinking and process discipline in equal measure.
And just when you thought you’d seen everything that bespoke eyewear has to offer, the Hoya concept proves just the opposite.
Explore the world of made-to-measure with Amazing Eyewear, to find out everything you need to know about eyewear tailor-made for you. A complete package for a perfect fit, whatever your size!
Featured image: Roger Bacon
More than half of the people on the planet use eyewear to correct or protect their vision. Eyewear products that fit poorly cause discomfort, dizziness, or blurred vision. One method to improve fit is to create custom-fit eyewear frames on an individual basis. In this paper we propose a new parametric design method to customize the eyewear frames based on individual 3D scanned data of head-and-face measurements. We take the eyeglasses frame as the case study to establish the landmark-product relationship and develop the parametric algorithm in Rhino/Grasshopper software. The results of the case study can generate custom-fitted eyeglass frame models for the two selected subjects, one 33% percentile Asian female and one 90% percentile Caucasian male. The future study will continue validating the eyewear frame fit and optimizing the parametric design method.