Over the last couple of posts and videos, I briefly mentioned that I can’t wear my contacts for a month. Allow me to explain! The week before I was supposed to go to Paris, I noticed my contacts started to move around in my eyes when I blinked. It was very annoying, causing blurred or double vision and irritation on my eye from all the movement. Initially I thought I just had dry eyes, so I bought some eye drops to get me through the Paris trip. By that time it had gotten pretty bad though, and the eye drops offered little relief. I decided to book an appointment with my optometrist right after I came home. The optometrist very quickly reached the conclusion that I have giant papillary conjunctivitis, an irritation of the inner eyelid caused by overuse of contact lenses. Plainly said: my eyelids developed bumps on the inside which were causing my contact to move around. Luckily, GPC can easily be treated by simply not wearing contacts for a few weeks and then switching to a different type of contact lense, as well as wearing them for shorter periods of time. I’ll admit I’m definitely guilty of over-wearing my contacts, as for the past almost 10 years I’ve simply had them in whenever I was awake, with just the occasional day of wearing glasses. I’ve obviously made my bed, now I have to lie in it. Looking at it from the bright side though, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to start a new relationship with my glasses and begin seeing them as a part of my look. My biggest “problem” with glasses so far has been that I feel like they don’t go with every outfit, but I figured that can easily be solved if I simply get more styles of glasses. I wouldn’t want to only own one pair of shoes either, right?
Since my budget isn’t unlimited, I turned to the internet to find some budget proof, on trend spectacles. Confession: I was totally drawn to the webshop I ended up purchasing from by a good old-fashioned TV commercial. I remembered Robbert’s sister bought a pair of really cute and surprisingly affordable glasses online a while back, and when I saw the commercial I decided to hop over to the website and take a look. I instantly fell in love with one pair of glasses in particular. Since they had mixed reviews however, I was a bit nervous about ordering from them. I decided to go for it anyway as the price difference with physical stores is so huge, and I’m happy to say I have no regrets whatsoever.
This is the pair I fell in love with: the CEO in rose champagne titanium from Charlie Temple. This is a much more subtle frame than my old pair of glasses, which are very large, chunky and dark. I love my glasses, don’t get me wrong, but they are so outspoken they just look out of place with some styles of clothing. These are much softer and more feminine (which reminds me that my old pair are actually men’s glasses, haha!), so they’re a perfect complement to my old ones. They offer this style in gold and silver as well, but I was super excited they have the rose gold, as that metal decidedly looks best with my (rather odd) skin colour.
When the optometrist told me no contacts, we were in the middle of a heat wave and the first thing I thought was “bye bye, beautiful collection of sunnies…” I knew I wouldn’t get through summer without sunglasses, so I wanted to get a pair of prescription sunglasses as soon as possible. Charlie Temple happen to offer all of their frames as sunglasses as well, so I decided to add a tinted pair to my order as well. I’m not disappointed! This is a perfect first pair in my opinion, nice and basic and neutral. This will go with most of the things I wear and I think the frame suits me nicely.
I’m super happy with my new glasses! Ordering them online was surprisingly easy. I had my prescription from my contacts, so all I did was fill that in, have Robbert measure the distance between my pupils, and that was all. The webshop has a “virtual fitting room” where you can see the glasses on yourself through the webcam, so I used that in order to determine whether they’d look good on me. Of course that isn’t fully reliable so I also compared the measurements of the glasses to the size of my old frame. The two of these combined, with the highest quality glass they offer, cost me a total of €100. Compared to what I’d normally have to pay, a minimum of €150 for one pair of non-tinted glasses, that’s a complete steal. I do recommend Charlie Temple to my Dutchies, but I don’t think they ship internationally unfortunately.
What do you think of these frames? :)
Hallo
is dat de CEO large (medium) of small ?
Bedankt voor je antwoord !
Maaike
When i started getting problems with contacts, i got eye surgrery. This – so far – was the best decision i made in my whole entire life and i can only highly recommend it to anyone.
I never got warm with glasses not just because of style problems, mainly it was because i find it so uncomfortable. Still, i dont even wear sunglasses.
The parameters of your lenses for glasses might be different than those you need in contact lenses, just keep that it mind and maybe next time you have a moment to make another appointment with your optometrist, ask them to test your eyes for glasses, not for contact lenses. The difference might be small, but overtime your eyes might get tired if the glasses are slightly too weak or too strong.
Both your frames are very cool! The first one looks vintage and sophisticated.
I made a switch from contacts to glasses as well, two years ago. It kinda felt like being a child again, when contacts were almost terrifying and glasses were integral part of my identity/looks.