TrendSpotting
THE BIGGEST TRENDS + NEWS YOU CAN USE
SPRING SPECS STYLE: 4 Bold Trends
Wild Child. Fendi Jungle sunglasses from Safilo (style FF 0178S) boast iconic graphic patterns and daring color combinations
Bold and beautiful. Wildly playful. Saturated with standout hues. This spring, eyewear is not for the faint of heart. Luckily, reimagined classics also step up to the line to deliver modern options for your more conservative customers.
Four key specs fashion trends have emerged for the season. Each will help spice up your eyewear assortment and entice customers—and most also align nicely with spring’s key apparel trends. Special thanks to Eyecessorize.com from The Vision Council for information culled from its Spring/Summer Eyewear Trends Report.
WILD + WHIMSICAL. This season, vivacious colors and unabashed shapes boldly go where no frame has gone before. Statement eyewear is truly in vogue. Oversized shapes take center stage, from extravagant cat-eye silhouettes to futuristic wraps. The color palette is head-turning—wild rose, bright yellow, electric violet, blood orange, neon blue. Daring embellishments also make their mark, from rubber and leather to animal prints.
ROMANCE RULES. Perfectly in step with spring’s fashion focus on in-your-face-lace and over-the-top Old English sleeves, royal opulence also reveals itself in the season’s eyewear designs. This shows up on specs as lace appliqués and lace-look tooling plus glittering gemstones and retro prints. For men, bookish rounds and thoroughly modern-yet-vintage aviators hit the mark.
SPORTY STYLE. Athleisure bends right into eyewear this spring, with wild-yet-sporty styles in perfectly bold hues, from lava red and apple green to milkshake pink—one of the key colors from Spring '16 runway shows. Shapes range from bubbly rounds and shields for women to 1980s visors and aviators for men. Flashy mirrored and flash mirror lenses top off the eyewear package for extra punch.
CLASSICS, REIMAGINED. A calming balance to eyewear’s wild side this season, this range of tried-and-true looks includes unfussy rectangles, rounds, and teardrop aviators. Peaceful, wearable hues mark the palette—dusty blue, sandy beige, misty gray, soft lilac, and silky white.
—Erinn Morgan
Eyewear Rental Delivers Style for Subscribers
Clothing rental and subscription services for both men and women have become an integral part of today’s “sharing” economy, where millennials would rather take Uber than own a car. Notice the rise of hugely successful rental services for clothing and accessories—like Rent the Runway.
Building on this theme in the eyewear arena, ditto.com launched Endless Eyewear, a service that caters to young adults’ desires to change up their specs regularly without breaking the bank. For a monthly fee, subscribers can choose a pair of glasses (or sunwear, even Rx sunwear) and then swap them for something different. Whenever they want. As many times as they want.
Ditto.com was cofounded by Kate Doerksen (also the CEO) as an eyewear e-commerce site noted for its 180-degree-view virtual try-on system using a customer-created video of their face and head.
THE ORIGIN: “The mindset around eyewear is different than the mindset of accessories where people are accustomed to buying frequently, or at least seasonally,” explains Catherine Magee, vice president of marketing at ditto.com. “We wanted to fulfill the desires of our customers who wanted their eyewear to be more stylish and to change it up seasonally. We had no idea how big this desire actually was.”
THE TREND: The majority of Endless Eyewear subscribers are women. Many are also social influencers, who need frequent access to new styles for their businesses and social posts. Subscribers want to be able to change up their eyewear to reflect the season or keep up with quickly changing style trends.
THE ECP ANGLE: Is “renting” eyewear in your business’ future? Who knows? But a key takeaway from this online service is that finding a creative way to give customers what they want will always build more business.
As Magee notes, some customers use the “swap” service to try many styles before ultimately buying one, and it gives them access to designs and brands they may normally not have discovered. The service has helped ditto.com’s purchase rate grow, and has contributed mightily to social engagement with the business.
—Susan Tarrant
4 Fashion Trends from MIDO
Eyewear has never looked so lavish. Here, Eyecare Business delivers key trends we spotted on the floor at the recent MIDO show in Milan, held February 27-29
UNCONVENTIONAL SHAPES
Big and oversized for him and her. The stars of the season are frames and glasses that cover the face, offering the wearer the "mega-factor" and protection from the sun.
JEWEL STUDDED
Sequins, pearls, crystals, and mother-of-pearl adornments galore showed up on frames. Eyewear is experiencing a season of opulence with all that glitters.
ROUND—WITH A TWIST
Bookish rounds are still the rage, but styles are getting amped up with larger sizes, unique materials, and color. Design looks back to the ‘70s and the iconic styles of stars like John Lennon and David Bowie.
RAINBOW PALETTE
Frames, including sunwear and ophthalmic eyewear, were awash in a ROYGBIV range of colors—a magnetic spectacle. These head-turning hues piqued eyewear buyers’ attention at the show.
MIDO 2017 will take place February 25-27.
Eyecare professionals shopping in style at MIDO
Photo: Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images for MIDO
Color-abundant—and creative—displays
Photo: Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images for MIDO
Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and her daughter Cosima making a spectacle at MIDO 2016
Photo: Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images for MIDO
Eyewear display inspiration
Photo: Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images for MIDO
Lenses take center stage in a highly creative way
Photo: Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images for MIDO