Glasses are this year’s hottest fashion accessory

January 16, 2024

We should all have our eye on the latest trend: glasses.

Prescription or faux, frames are the hottest accessory this season — your elementary-school bullies be damned.

New York City content creator Caroline Vazzana told The Post that the accessory once reserved for “nerdy” gals has become widely adopted in an eyewear “revolution.”

“They enhance an outfit,” said Vazzana, who has accumulated some 30 fashionable pairs of prescription specs. “I feel like you instantly take an outfit from an 8 to a 10 by adding a cool pair of frames.”

Bayonetta glasses — the thin, sensible frames most notably worn by Gisele Bündchen in “The Devil Wears Prada” — have suddenly become all the rage on TikTok, as creators flaunt their vintage specs and test the eyewear with a viral filter.

Optical frames have been seen on Doja Cat, Bella Hadid, Reneé Rapp and, most notably, Billie Eilish at the Golden Globes, but they’ve also been spotted on the catwalk. They were featured prominently in the last two collections from Miu Miu — a brand that appears to already have a chokehold on Gen Z’s never-ending obsession with ’90s style.

But the public perception of glasses today is a far cry from their reputation even a decade ago when they were seen as an uncool crutch for enhancing eyesight, with limited styles available.

“It sounds so obvious today, but I can tell you . . . when I launched the brand, this was not the perception of glasses at all,” French designer Thierry Lasry, founder of his celebrity-loved namesake eyewear brand, told The Post.

“Now, it’s face accessory, essentially.”

Lasry has recently seen a “significant increase” in demand for light-tinted lenses — pink, blue, yellow and clear lenses that are typically worn indoors or at night — but it’s only the beginning of “this evolution.”

The eyewear market today is valued at an estimated $35 billion, and in 2033, the luxury eyewear market value is expected to soar to $56 billion.

But in order to be widely adopted, frames first needed to shake their unsightly reputation as a “medical device,” said Lasry, and convince the masses that they have “nothing to do with” eyesight.

As demand for eyewear ramps up, stylish frames in various shapes, sizes and colorways have become increasingly commonplace after years of choosing from drab specs. Some eyewear designers, like Lasry, are beginning to cater to chic consumers.

And the historically lackluster options at the optometrist’s office inspired Tracy Green and Nancey Flowers-Harris to create Vontélle, a Brooklyn-based brand delivering an extensive array of colorfully rich frames specifically for people of color. Since founding their company four years ago, they’ve sold 33,000 pairs and anticipate doubling their sales this year, they told Crain’s New York Business.

As someone who needs glasses to see, Vazzana said it’s “exciting” to see eyewear’s popularity grow.

When she was first prescribed optical lenses in high school, she wore them as little as possible due to the “bad stigma” surrounding glasses in popular films and shows, in which the stereotypically gawky heroine removes her glasses and suddenly is perceived as beautiful. (See: Mia Thermopolis in “The Princess Diaries” or Betty Suarez in “Ugly Betty.”)

“It was a struggle for years to overcome this societal thought of, you know, ‘You will not be beautiful if you wear your glasses all the time,’ ” she said.

Vazzana has since embraced wearing glasses — and even refused to ditch her specs on her wedding day.

“It’s going to inspire so many people that they can feel confident with their glasses on, and they don’t have to take them off to meet some societal beauty standard,” she said.

Vazzana said she will often purchase a pair of bold sunnies and take them to her local LensCrafters to install her prescription lenses, because “you can be sexy and beautiful and fashionable and chic with your glasses.”

While it may not be necessary to own as many pairs of frames as shoes — although Lasry says it might be — topping off a look with a pair of bold specs can allow personal flair to shine through.

“There’s nothing more than your face to send a message to the world,” said Lasry.