As someone who travels a lot and takes a ton of photos, the best bit of kit I have isn’t my camera, or my tripod, or anything you can buy in a photography shop. It’s my eyesight! As a teenager, I needed to wear glasses and I hated them. When I was 27, about 13 years ago, I spent A LOT of money on having laser eye surgery, got 20/20 vision back, and threw my glasses in the bin. Life was great.
A couple of years ago, noticing that my eyesight didn’t seem as good, I had an eye test. The optician told me my eyes were now bad enough that I needed glasses to drive in, to be road legal, and I was really upset. Glasses 13 years ago were all ugly, my prescription was expensive, and I hated having to spend so much on something I didn’t like myself in. I was also sad to no longer be able to wear cool sunglasses, or to have to choose between being able to see and looking good. Because I write this blog, I NEED good quality photos from my trips, so it wasn’t even a choice, I need that perfect vision.
When Aoolia Eyewear contacted me complimenting me on my content and asking if I wanted to work with them, and they would send me three pairs of glasses in return for this post, I was honestly just pleased to not have to pay for new glasses. I expected all of their frames to be ugly, practical not pretty, and figured I’d just take them off for photos of me, like I did all those years ago. Then, I started looking on their website.
I was shocked. Aoolia has so many different choices of frames, so many styles, colours and shapes, that I didn’t know where to start. It took me a pretty long time to choose my three pairs because I could have chosen ten, but I eventually narrowed it down and put my order in.
I went for Elfin, a cat eye shaped, fairly thick frame in purple, which is a lovely light colour in real life, for my first pair. I actually like them on my face, and I’ll grab some better photos on my next trip so you can see, but they are a hit. They are comfortable, too, which is the most important thing. They are a bargain at just £23.20.
For my second pair, I went for Claire, in pink. They’re not pink at all, they’re sort of a rose gold colour, and that’s what I liked. These surprised me, the square shaped frames are really flexible and bendy, which means they’re less likely to break. I’m pretty gentle with my glasses normally but if they end up in a travel bag on a flight, they can get a bit battered, so I’m reassured that these should survive that. This pair is unisex, and I like that they’re not super girly. They cost £52.96.
For my third pair, I chose Mitchell, another square shaped unisex pair. These are just as lightweight as Claire, just as flexible, and I like the pattern a lot. This pair costs £55.75.
Honestly, I’m amazed that Aoolia had so many pairs of glasses, at such reasonable prices, that I don’t hate. My only criticism, and it might be something they’re looking at anyway, is that it’s a shame you can’t buy prescription sunglasses from them. The first pair in particular would make beautiful sunglasses.
If you want to treat yourself to some new glasses, you can use the code Lauraa15 (yes, there’s meant to be a second a, I double checked) for 15% off your order.
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