Chasing Onassis

Yesterday I spoke about trying to match your face to a sunglass frame. I was in search of recreating the look of Aristotle Onassis by acquiring a pair of Francois Pinton sunglasses through the web store A Suitable Wardrobe.

Once the glasses arrived I was somewhat disappointed. The quality was fabulous, the shape was almost an exact replication but there was one problem which needed resolving. The lenses that came with these glasses were too dark. They were so dark in fact that I felt they would only be useful on the brightest of days. But, more importantly, the aesthetic value was decreased because a) they made me look too swarthy and too much like a criminal and b) they didn't match my photo reference to Onassis. Onassis's glasses pictured circa late 1960's / early 70's had very light lenses in a sort of browny greeny colour. The beauty of Ari's glasses was that you could see his eyes and I am quite sure that the shipping tycoon wanted it that way. He made a habit of trying to pyschologically overpower people in boardrooms and my guess is his eyes played a big part. My reference picture I will paste below.

So to recreate the look I needed to take out the existing lenses and replace them with less opaque brown lenses. I made a decision to go one step further and try and improve upon the Onassis pair by organising a pair of graduated brown lenses. Enter George Skoufis.

I have been using George Skoufis in Paddington since I was introduced to him by sunglass designer Graz Mulcahy who named one of his models after me a few years back. If you want to know anything about sunglasses, construction of sunglasses, lens properties and manufacturing methodologies, George Skoufis is your man.  After five minutes with George I was given about 5 different sets of graduated lenses and George encouraged me to get the brown graduated lenses to match the frames and to start the lens graduation from just over the middle of the blank lenses down to the light areas. This meant, as he told me, 'you will get the look but I don't advise using them on very bright days'. The price? Just $80.00 Australian and it took no more than 30 minutes to do on the spot.

But you know what? I don't really want them for bright days. I just want to occasionally put them on my face and pretend for a day that I have a mega yacht, a whale foreskin stool at my bar and enough chocolate bars in my bank account that I can set sail without any headaches and relax with Winston on the back of my boat with my new sunglasses. For those of us who sadly missed the boat on being a shipping tycoon, purchasing these glasses from A Suitable Wardrobe is a rather thrifty compromise. 

New graduated brown lenses to improve the look of my Francois Pinton sunglasses from A Suitable Wardrobe