Under-$600 Designer Sunglasses

I use sunglasses to try a frame shape I would never commit to in a pair of prescription glasses. A bad guess lasts one summer, and a good one tells you what to look for in everything else. This edit is my case for designer sunglasses as a low-stakes way to step a little outside your usual shape.

 

Saint Laurent is where I would start. The house was founded in 1961 by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and the SL 557 slim tortoiseshell pair has that lean, slightly severe Paris line. Chloé, started by Gaby Aghion in 1952 as a relaxed alternative to couture, brings softness with the Salomé frame. For pilots, Versace's VE2236 and Tom Ford's Bronson both sit wide and confident, and Tom Ford's Iggy oval in tortoiseshell-effect is the friendliest way into an oval if you usually wear squares. Ray-Ban's rectangle frame is the one I would hand to anyone who thinks rectangles are boring. Isabel Marant's small ivory Pixa cat-eye, Jacquemus's Alba oval, Tory Burch's angular Kira and Illesteva's Leonard with olive lenses round out the lighter, less obvious end of the grid.

 

My test is simple. Stand at a mirror and check that your brows are not hidden by the top edge, then smile, because cheeks that push the lenses up mean the frame is too low. Round faces tend to love the sharper pilots and rectangles, and angular faces tend to love Chloé's curves.

 

What I would skip: a frame that only looks good in the product photo, because the real test is how it sits on you in motion.

This grid is the deep end, forty-odd frames, so I sorted my own thinking by shape before I looked at a single label. Aviators come first, because the form goes back to 1937, when Ray-Ban released it, developed for American pilots. The Classic Aviator in this grid is still the cleanest version of the idea, and Jacquemus's Aviador and Heaven Mayhem's Vesper are the playful takes.

 

For something rounder, Oliver Peoples is the name I trust. The label opened on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood in 1987, and the Desmon round acetate frame has that Los Angeles ease. Khaite's cat-eye with Oliver Peoples is sharper and a bit more dressed up. Chloé's round metal frame is thin and light, and Miu Miu's D-frame and Prada's mask frame are for days when I want the glasses to be the whole outfit.

 

Squares are the biggest group here. Givenchy's Day square, Toteme's Voyager and Dries Van Noten's square acetate are all substantial without being heavy, while Balenciaga's Turbo rectangle reads far more graphic.

 

Further down, Garrett Leight, rag & bone and Elisa Johnson cover classic navigators and squares, and rag & bone's bone-horn cat-eye, Chimi's narrow tortoise Lea and the Ray-Ban Julie metal oval are the quieter picks. Givenchy's City oval joins the City rounds, and AIRE and The Attico are the playful colour picks.

 

Check the width against your temples before anything else, then check how much of your cheek the lens covers. What I would skip: any oversized frame you have only seen from the front, since the arms decide whether it stays put.

Sunglasses are one of the easiest things to buy secondhand. There is no fit to guess at beyond the width, a good frame barely ages, and every pair below is pre-owned, so each one is a single piece that will be gone once it sells.

 

Gucci's GG0595S is the pair I would grab first. The gold metal round frame carries the house's bamboo detail, a nod to the bamboo handle Guccio Gucci's workshop first put on a bag in 1947. Prada's Phantos is the rounded black frame with rose lenses, Burberry's 3094 is a soft round in brown metal with a gradient lens, and Bottega Veneta's black metal square is the sharpest shape of the group. Chloé shows up twice, once in grey with the scalloped Vera frame and once as a thin round wire, and Furla's brown oversized pair is the easy one for driving.

 

Dsquared2, the label Canadian twins Dean and Dan Caten launched in 1995 and run from Milan, covers the square aviator in tortoiseshell and black, plus the oversized black DQ0044. A couple of those are separate listings of the same frame, which is how resale works: you are buying the exact pair in the photos.

 

My test with any pre-owned pair: open and close the arms a few times to make sure the hinges feel tight, then hold the lenses up to a window and look for scratches in the middle, where your eye actually sits.

 

What I would skip: a listing with no photo of the inside of the temple arm, which is where the model number lives. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Miu Miu Sunglasses Dupe and Miu Miu Glasses Guide.