Opticals, Darling

 Do you want to know what the hottest accessory for summer 2026 is? 

(Yes please, I really want to know.)

If the group of fashion editors I was travelling with last week are anything to go by, it's what are known in the industry as opticals, or glasses to you and me.

(Glasses are a bit common - opticals is a much, much better word.)

Still Life with an open Book and Spectacles
William T. Howell Allchin (1844-1883)
Photo Credit: Ashmolean Museum Oxford [CC BY-NC-ND] 

They were sporting them almost to a woman, ubiquitously outsize, some a variation on the theme of aviators, either the classic metal frames or tortoiseshell, others a chunky squared-off style, like an NHS pair of yore that had been subject to the, um, Engorgement Charm in Harry Potter.

(How delightful. Pilot opticals in many different styles. Fabulous.)

Those women were mostly a lot younger than me. I couldn't quite pluck up the courage to ask how many actually needed glasses and how many were wearing them because they looked cool...

(You're absolutely right. It would have taken extremes of courage to ask such a question.)

To be honest, the news that wearing glasses is now a fashion flex as opposed to a frailty couldn't have come at a better time for me, this being the year when my eyesight has definitely started to show its age...

(Yes, so now people won't know if you need glasses, sorry opticals, or if you are in the realm of the fashion flex. Great.)

I think that as you get older the framing glasses can give your face delivers the kind of point of difference that turns them into not the wrong kind of game-changer but the right one.

(How profound. Definitely the right kind of game changer.)

I guess I should be writing a book called Better Style with Glasses.

(Indeed you should. It would become a best seller.) 

That's if you go for the right glasses. You need some that don't attempt to disappear themselves, because the risk is that this will disappear you. You need glasses that are loud and proud...

(Disappearing glasses might make you invisible. And silent and humble glasses are really pathetic.)

(Anna Murphy, The Times, 2026)