We have been hearing about it ever since the holiday credit card bills started arriving in mid-January: tiny sunglasses are going to be big in 2018. Well summer is just about here, and it appears as though all the eyewear prognostications will come to fruition. It appears as though tiny sunglasses will be the big hit of summer. We’re warning you now because, as it turns out, not everyone can pull off the tiny look.
The Strategist’s Katie Schneider offered her take on the tiny sunglasses trend in an April piece explaining how to embrace tiny even if it doesn’t look good on you. Schneider made some very good points further cementing the fact that not everyone can pull off tiny sunglasses.
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More Like a Big Joke
Schneider began her piece telling the story of something she did when she was younger. She describes buying a used car only to find a pair of tiny sunglasses left behind. She claims they were extremely small on their own, but their size was made to look even smaller against a rather large face. Apparently, Schneider used to don the sunglasses to surprise her friends. This running joke apparently left them all in stitches every time Schneider pulled the gag.
The point of the story is to say that tiny sunglasses don’t work well on larger faces. If the difference between your face and your sunglasses is too drastic, you could end up looking more like a caricature of yourself rather than what people normally see. You may leave them laughing; you may leave them crying; you may leave them running away in fear. You are not likely to leave them with a positive impression of your fashion sense.
Interestingly enough, Schneider compared tiny sunglasses on a large face with giant sunglasses on a small face. The Olsen twins were fodder for her explanation. But guess what? It makes complete sense. Just like your face can get swallowed up by a pair of sunglasses that are much too big, tiny sunglasses can get lost in a face that is too big for them. According to Schneider, that’s what makes the tiny trend such a joke.
Try Them on First
So, how do you avoid spending a ton of money on the tiny trend only to get a pair of sunglasses you won’t wear? Olympic Eyewear, a Utah distributor of multiple brands of designer sunglasses, says the best strategy is to try them on first. That requires visiting a boutique or department store where you can actually handle the sunglasses in question. You can try them on and look in the mirror, then turn around and slowly walk away if the sight horrifies you.
Ordering tiny sunglasses online is a really bad idea for obvious reasons. You’re trusting what you see in a photograph to be your guide. Yet you really cannot tell how the sunglasses will actually look. You could drop a week’s worth of pay on a pair of designer shades that make you look more like a walking fashion faux pas than a legitimate fashionista.
One last thing to ponder is something that so many people in the eyewear industry have been saying for quite a while: the tiny sunglasses trend is just that, a trend. It is a fad that will last for a few months before fading away into relative obscurity, only to be resurrected again in about five or six years. So if you’re going to buy tiny, don’t spend a lot. You will not be wearing those sunglasses when next year’s Christmas bills start arriving.
