Katie 009

The Silhouette company from Austria started designing and manufacturing glasses in 1964. During the heyday of the large frames in the 1970's and 1980's, Silhouette made a major contribution to the development of eyewear fashion. During the retro era of the 1990's and 2000's, the company specialized itself in discrete rimless glasses. Now the big frames are back in the streets and it's to be hoped that Silhouette will switch back to a contemporary version of the marvelous glasses they made before the retro era. A few years ago, the company obligingly met my request to put a year of manufacture to some twenty Silhouette glasses in my collection. Silhouette used serial numbers and this enabled me to establish the age of most of their glasses - about a hundred - in my collection.

Katie 008

Glasses: Silhouette 1045, made circa 1980
[L: -0.50 / R: -0.75]

Katie 006 - 007

Wonderful posing by Katie in a red pair of drop temple glasses from the 1980's. The frame is especially suitable for ladies with a narrow PD but the optician failed to find a client for it. Anyway, there's always a second chance....

Katie 005

Drop temple glasses were a hype of the 1980's. They disappeared from the streets when the retro era set in.

Katie 004

Glasses: Tega Styal (drop temple glasses)
(empty frame)

Katie 002 - 003

My life partner Nel recently called this Christian Dior frame "the safety pin glasses" and she is absolutely right. I'm not sure about the age of the frame - my educated guess is early 1990's.
As Katie enjoys perfect eyesight, I showed her a small box filled with ten empty frames and she chose two of them. My plan was to start the photo shoot with the empty frames but there was the usual time pressure and when we arrived at the scene of the photo shoot, there was no talk about any sequence. My choice is to pretend that the photo shoot was built up the usual way, starting with glasses near the model's own prescription and ending with the strongest glasses.
Katie's posing here has all the hallmarks of the professional model - simply gorgeous!

Katie 001

Photo shoot: August 26th, 2013
Location: Esplanada, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

Rx model: perfect eyesight

Glasses: Christian Dior 2818 (empty frame)