Gucci. Michael Kors. Versace. Brooks Brothers. Polo. They’re names that dominate the fashion world, trips to the mall, your television set, maybe your closet—and definitely your dispensary. Encircled by icon-like POP depicting strong-jawed, just-pale-enough young faces casting come-hither looks to your patients, they’re the frames that beckon to male and female, young and old, some zyl and some metal and some combination but all of them promising. The promise of fashionable glasses; the promise of a piece of luxury for a fraction of the price; and, last (and maybe even least, in your patient’s mind), great vision. Every optician worth his or her salt knows the appeal of the luxury frame. After all, it revolutionized our industry—changing glasses from medical devices into accessories, reducing stigma while increasing profits, ushering the masses into our dispensaries through the great, shining beacon of status.

All right, that might be a cynical introduction (and I might have watched Zoolander recently), but, there’s something not to be said for luxury eyewear. In recent years, we’ve reached a sort of fashion bubble. Not that long ago, branded frames were something of an exception rather than a rule—a neat little quirk of the industry that allowed us to convince patients they weren’t walking around with the equivalent of crutches, dentures, or other medical devices strapped to their faces. Today, they’re the rule. Walk into most dispensaries and you’re hit with the scene I described above. We’ve almost converted our offices into mini-storefronts. The question is, does the benefit warrant the cost? Have patients come to view glasses too much as accessories? It wasn’t’ a rare occurrence for a patient to come in and buy high-end designer frames at the expense of their lenses. I can’t tell you how many times I cringed dispensing non-AR, no transitions, lined bifocal CR39 lenses in a Gucci or Versace frame because the patient saw glasses as a status symbol first and a visual aid second. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the rigors involved in dealing with the demands placed by many vendors who represent high-end names, demanding that x percent of your dispensary be dedicated to this product or that, to the point that your frame boards have been hijacked by someone who sees the inside of your office maybe three times a year—if at all. Before you know it, your dispensary isn’t even yours anymore—and, one could argue, it’s barely a dispensary at all. Rather, you’ve gone from an optician to the front-counter person at a frame boutique.

What’s an optician to do?

Thankfully, designer frames haven’t completely taken over the industry yet, and we don’t have to stand back and let that happen, either. It’s time, as an industry, not to give ourselves over to brands, but to brand ourselves. For every designer line out there right now, there are plenty of “no name” lines—optical exclusive brands that patients will have never heard of, and which will allow YOU to dictate the narrative of your frame sale. Are these frames for sportsmen, geeks, housewives, executives, bald guys?

That’s your call. By dedicating more non-luxury space in your dispensary, you allow yourself the opportunity to retake the sales process.

Even for those patients concerned with replicating a celebrity look can benefit from the experience of buying non-luxury frames: Consider, two of the most iconic glasses wearers of the 20th century—John Lennon and Buddy Holly—weren’t wearing designer frames at all. In fact, they were both essentially wearing Medicaid glasses. Lennon’s frames came from the NHS, the UK system that distributes eyeglasses free of charge under the country’s national health program; whereas Holly was wearing a pair of frames made by Faosa, a company that manufactured frames for the Mexican government to distribute (the frames were so thick and bulky precisely because they had to last for the people who got them). The very look so many people are trying to replicate isn’t high-end fashion at all, but generic style made special by the wearer.

We’re living in a period of rapid, radical change. Maybe it’s time we make some of our own?


Preston Fassel was born in Houston, Texas and grew up between St. Charles, Missouri and Broken Arrow, Okla.

In 2009, Preston graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Liberal Arts. In 2011, he graduated Cum Laude from Sam Houston State University with a Bachelor's of Science.

Preston currently works as an Optician in the Houston area. His interest in the history of eyewear goes back to his time in high school, when he developed an interest in all things vintage.

In addition to his writing for The 20/20 Opticians Handbook and 20/20 Magazine, Preston is a featured writer for Rue Morgue Magazine, where he reviews of horror and science-fiction DVDs. His fiction writing has been featured three times in Swirl magazine, the literary arts journal of Lone Star College and Montgomery County. He is the author of the definitive work on the life of British horror actress Vanessa Howard, Remembering Vanessa, which appeared in the Spring 2014 edition of Screem Magazine.