If you still think glasses are ugly, inspiring images of Adrian Mole or Nana Mouskouri, it’s time you invested in some designer glasses.

Glasses have long been a shorthand code for the geeky and ugly. Stereotypes abound in TV series and movies, where the boy who never gets the girl wears an ugly, ill-fitting pair of glasses. But designer glasses have revolutionized how we see glasses – some of the biggest names in fashion and style know how glasses can make a look. From rock stars to actresses, designer glasses can be the must-have fashion accessory.

Cool Glasses – Crazy Trends

But there are some styles of glasses that belong in the trash bin alongside the ugly stereotypes. With the vast array of designer glasses on offer, there’s really no excuse – but sometimes there’s no accounting for fashion and trends. Take Fern Cotton. The TV presenter was snapped wearing NHS-style glasses. But as the Daily Mail reported, even Cotton, known for her quirky style, couldn’t carry off the ugly specs, “If anyone can make NHS specs look cool, it would be her,” The Mail wrote, “But unfortunately, this is clearly one look that is unlikely  to catch on fast.”

Designer Glasses versus NHS

The free NHS glasses were said to blight many school children’s lives who suffered bullying and teasing for wearing the ugly design. Thankfully, designer glasses now mean no child, or adult, should suffer – glasses have become officially cool. The huge horn-rimmed NHS glasses however did see a re-fashion in the eighties, when glasses frames were huge and often in garish colours. But fashion can work in mysterious ways witnessed by the Ugly Betty effect as demand for her red-rimmed glasses reached fever pitch in America. The vintage look and retro style always comes round again in fashion, even the designs once assigned to the garbage heap of fashion make a come back. The 80s were a style abomination, yet in 2007 everyone was embracing its shoulder-pad gawkiness. Last year, in America an unlikely trend for designer glasses kicked off when bulky, ugly, big glasses frames became the must-have fashion accessory. The influence of alternative films hitting the mainstream audiences, such as Napoleon Dynamite, meant the glasses worn by the Dustin Hoffman character Tootsie, had a resurgence. Unlike stylish designer glasses made to fit face shapes, these glasses are unisex and bulky, but the clunky plastic look may be more than a flash in the fashion pan.

Ugly Glasses? Go Designer

The quirky trend began as customers began taking their mother’s over-sized glasses or aviator sunglasses into opticians asking them to be made into prescription glasses. But the trend moved beyond quirky, street trend-setters as British glasses designers followed their lead and you can buy reading glasses online today. The trend for the bug-eyed 80s glasses has floored some opticians.  As one optician said: “Before, it was that people would come in and try them on and laugh. But now, we have very attractive young ladies come in and put them on and they seriously ask how they look and you don’t want to say ‘terrible’ but, they’re still ugly.”