(More) New Glasses

My glasses addiction is getting nearly as bad as my shoe habit. I only used to have two pairs. For years and years, that was it, then at last count I somehow had eleven. How did that happen? And I'm still on the hunt for the elusive perfect green pair. Luckily Glasses Direct keep enabling me. Previously I've known exactly what I wanted from there and just ordered it but this time I was tempted by ALL THE THINGS. What's a girl to do but give the free home trial a go?



Yup, I mainly went for Scout glasses - they have such a nice colourful range that I always gravitate towards them when I'm browsing. The home trial option is super speedy and has the added bonus that you can do a mini specs parade in the office and get the team to help you decide which make you look most beautiful, rather than standing in an opticians and squinting blindly at the mirror. Score.

Alas my face was not playing ball when I tried to take trial pics of all the specs so you'll have to take my word for it that I looked extremely beautiful in all of them (naturally!). In summary, working from top to bottom in the above pic:

- Lush!
- Too big and chunky for my face.
- Ok but not a wow.
- Ace!

So I'd narrowed it down to red specs and Stormtrooper specs:





It was a hard choice but I went for...

RED SPECS!

Emily by Scout, to be exact. They are super duper lightweight (so light that you put them on and think "huh, these don't feel like there's anything on my face") with a lovely matt effect finish. It always takes me ages to get used to new glasses when they're a different shape and I battled for ages with not thinking I suited bigger frames but I was smitten with these straight away. All hail the big frames!



And while Glasses Direct were kind enough to send me this pair for review, because they're lovely like that, I do spend my own hard-earned cash with them as well. When their offers are that good, you kinda have to! I treated myself to a nice blue-framed pair of Scout Firework glasses and this Festival pair with a sunglasses tint on the lenses just before my January holiday. Total cost £55. Is it any wonder I've ended up with so many pairs?!

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I've Got New Glasses

Long overdue, aren't they?!

I get thoroughly good wear out of my specs. If I'm awake, I'm wearing them. They always seem like a chuffing expensive purchase in the first place but once you look at the cost-per-wear basis, they're probably the biggest bargain I ever buy.

I have a love/hate relationship with cool glasses though. I love them: they hate my face. I think I posted about this last time I bought specs as I remember trying on pretty much every pair of kitsch/funky/interesting frames and they all looked awful on me. Waaah! Stupid face.

So I was all set for my biennial trip to Specsavers, hoping hard that I would magically start to suit cool specs and then Glasses Direct got in touch, saved me loads of hassle and sent me a gorgeous pair from their London Retro Retrospectiv Collection. Yoicks! Aren't they fab?

The funky Loren style was very tempting (who doesn't want to look like a 50s secretary?!) but I went for Presley in Rich Havana, my logic being that they're not too dissimilar to my current tortoiseshell pair, just a bit bigger. I was fretting slightly that they'd look too big on my face but I think I can just about get away with them. Maybe next time I'll take a further step towards true speccy coolness and get some really retro looking ones.

I love Glasses Direct. Yes, they sent me this pair for free and that's most awesome of them, but I've bought both glasses and sunglasses from them before now and I've had no complaints with any of my purchases. They do a 7 day trial where you can pick 4 pairs and try them at home. If, like me, you're never quite sure about what actually suits your face, this is a godsend.  It suits me so much more than having to stand in a shop with a sales assistant hovering around me and trying to get me to pick things that just don't suit me.

I'm all for things that make my shopping life easier. Very short of time and patience at the moment!

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Bloggers & Brands

You know what I don't like? Being sent a generic email asking me to give over an entire blogpost so that I can enter a competition and be in with a tiny chance of winning something. That's not working with bloggers, that's asking a huge bunch of them for a load of free advertising space but couching it in "Yay, competition!" terms.  I'm sure it makes perfect business sense and if other people want to take part, great, but those emails really rub me up the wrong way.  I'd so much rather companies were honest about it. Either pay for sponsored posts or send out products for review or do something else innovative but don't sneak around pretending that this is an awesome opportunity you've laid on specially for us when all you want is free advertising.

You know what I do like? Brands that get social media and use their Twitter account for things other than retweeting how awesome they are. Brands that want to work with bloggers and realise the benefits of it. Brands that understand building a community and a following are important. Get us on board: we like to shop and spend money, we like to write, we like to take pretty, arty photos of products. We have lots of readers. We can be useful to you and we'll be loyal if we like you. It's a no-brainer really, isn't it?

Here are two brands that I've been in touch with recently. Both of them rock. They're happy to work with bloggers, talk to us rather than at us and yes, offer us some free products as a way of promoting them and spreading the word. Nowt wrong with that!

I've never fallen into the blogger trend of owning a satchel. I basically don't like them. I love a good leather bag but they have to be something a bit special to win me over, so I was quite happy to stick with the massive handbags I already own. Then I went to a BBQ with Char a few weeks ago and on the way home I shared a car seat with her Brit Stitch Half Pint bag. It was so ridiculously cute I nearly stole it. Far too small for my needs, but then I discovered that they did a size called the Milkman and, well, come to Alex, my preciousssssss.....

You can fit a book in it! It's not a useful bag unless it passes this test.

It may not be quite as ridiculously cute as the Half Pint but it's even more beautiful. Such a gorgeous shape and colour. If I had room to store them I'd get one in every colour.

Check out Brit Stitch on Twitter and Facebook and say hello. Jen runs their social media stuff and she's doing a kick-ass job at it.

Brand number two: Sunglasses Shop, and their sister site Glasses Direct. Both are super happy to work with bloggers. I'm an awkward customer and need prescription sunglasses, which unfortunately Sunglasses Shop aren't able to send out for review (damn my wonky eyes!), but they very kindly sent me this cute Scout Marilyn pair of specs from Glasses Direct instead.

I showed them to the Mothership and she pulled That Face. You know the one. "I think they look bloody awful on you but I'm too polite to come out and say it so I'll just try (and fail) at keeping my face non-commital and go 'Mmmmhmmmm, very nice' instead". That Face.

Meh. Yes, they're probably a bit big for my face and no, I'm not the sort of pretty young thing that can wear massive specs and look cute and ironic. I just look like a dick who picked some glasses that are too big for her face but WHATEVER. I don't really care. I like them.

And I like Glasses Direct because they have awesomely low prices and their customer service is good. I've tested out the returns policy and I can assure you that a) they actually reply to emails, b) they're polite and helpful and c) they sort things out quickly. So I bought these Audrey glasses with a sunglasses tint as a treat for myself. Woop. First pair of prescription sunglasses I've ever owned. That's quite bad isn't it? My poor eyes.

(the rule about glasses being too big for your face doesn't apply with sunglasses. The bigger the better.)

Just for the sake of clarity, the bag and the specs are c/o Brit Stitch and Glasses Direct respectively. I bought the sunglasses myself. They're all great.

A Few Of My Favourite Things

It's not a Sound of Music reference. Just little things about today's outfit that make me smile:

#wardrobezoo

Sparkly shoes

Messy top knots

Mary flipping Poppins

New lippy. MAC Creme Cup to be exact.

Buttons on cardis

Fun earrings

Rescuing a long-forgotten frock from the mending pile and making it wearable with a new zip.

Dress - New Look (I think...the label has been lopped off) via New Life

Handmade cardi - charity shop

Peacoat - Tu

Flat shoes-Stylist Click

Earrings - River Island

Initial necklace - Sunday Girl

Mary Poppins necklace - Etsy

Specs Appeal

I'm a proud glasses wearer.  Have a quick read through this post if you want to see me getting a bit ranty about the subject (Yes, I am still mad at that person who told me I'd ruin the wedding photos by being a bridesmaid in glasses.) but today I have no time for rants.  I am feeling extremely cheerful because I have new specs!

I made a couple of discoveries when selecting these frames. Firstly, either my tastes are cheaper than they used to be, or the lower priced frames have got nicer because the bill was half the price it was two years ago. Huzzah! Secondly (and not so huzzah-worthy), I quickly established that my face just does not suit a lot of frame shapes. I get my eyes tested at Specsavers and I had vague hopes of suiting some of their fab Gok Wan range. Sadly not. A lot of the retro shapes, lovely as they are, look ridiculous on me. Which is odd, cos I have a big head. But clearly not a big face?  Or perhaps it's just not the sort of face that can wear big specs and look cool.

I ventured a bit out of my usual style with this pair though. Tortoiseshell, with a very slight retro shape to them, they're just lovely.

Apparently green isn't a big colour in the world of specs (boo hiss), and although one of the shop assistants was a complete gem and made it her mission to track down every single pair they had in every possible shade of green, none of them were quite right. I went for this pair instead.  They're classed as green in the catalogue but they're totally aqua.

Now that my eyes have got used to them and I don't have the dreaded new-prescription headache anymore, I am super pleased!

Top pair - Ruth
Bottom pair - Melanie

Speccy Four Eyes

aka Alex Gets New Glasses


Do you like them?

I have been after a pair of green specs for ages but they are surprisingly difficult to find. Even though these look a bit blue, they are in fact green. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, a very good Glasses Direct deal and the lovely Tamsin, these were mine for a shade over £25. Bargain, yes?

They are quite bold.


I am a very long way out of my comfort zone with this size and style of frame (slight shades of Su Pollard/Timmy Mallett?) but for that price and for a backup pair, I thought I might as well take a risk. After all, if you're going to wear bright green specs, there's no point being subtle about the size of them, is there?

Surprisingly hard to take a nice photo of me wearing them though. It's either silly face (as above), hidey face (as below) or minging face (not appearing on the blog thank you very much).

Life Through A Lens

Two things that I would never seek to change about myself: my height and the fact I wear glasses. Yet people seem to constantly feel that it's ok to comment sarkily upon them. The height thing - yeah, yeah, I'm short, I know that. Really doesn't bother me. But the glasses thing makes me very cross.

I like wearing glasses.

I always have, even before specs got all cool and hipster. I can barely remember a time when I didn't wear them. I do have very faint memories of having to wear an Elastoplast eye patch in infant school to try and strengthen my lazy eye but I think my brain has suppressed most of the horrors of that.

What I really do hate is people who seem to think that glasses are hideous and that wearing them must make a person dull and unstylish. That sort of person will actually think it's ok to tell me I'd be much prettier if I didn't wear them, or that I will (and this is a direct quote here) "ruin the wedding photos by having glasses on." Did you know that bridesmaids shouldn't wear glasses? No, me either.

When I came across this Hero & Cape tshirt I just had to buy it. It's a little bit of an up yours to all those idiots who like to pass comment about my specs.

T-shirt - Hero & Cape
Shorts & bag - H&M
Shoes - Irregular Choice & Dorothy Perkins
Rings - MerCurios and craft fair.

(I was having a hideous photo day with a great big fat face, so attempted to improve things with changes of shoes and hair. Didn't really work. Oh well.)

Mon amie Chloe also succumbed to the lure of the tshirt so we decided to double post about it. I should probably point out that what you see is not quite what arrived - we both ended up altering it for fit reasons.


The tshirts are lovely quality and great designs but the one slight flaw as far as I'm concerned it that they're unisex fit. I'm not the skinnymalinky type of girl who can pop on her boyfriend's tshirt (well I don't have one, so that would be tricky in itself. Go with me here...) and look stylish. I just look like my tshirt is too big. This one fitted ok in places but the neckline was a bit too high so I chopped it down a bit and edged it and the sleeves with some black ribbon. I may still alter the length and sides a bit but then again I may just leave it as it is - I'm very weird about tshirts and potential cling/muffin top. We shall see.


ps - am not ignoring the riot situation. I've been glued to Twitter and News 24 for the past couple of days and I am livid that idiots are doing this to my city. My brain needs some lightness though. I don't want my blog to be as ranty as my tweets are at the moment.