Do expensive sunglasses offer better UV protection or are you merely paying for a brand? And can you get the hottest shades for cooler prices online? CONOR POPEfinds out
Having read recently that Ray Ban’s Clubmaster sunglasses are red hot this summer, Pricewatch felt it had no alternative but to dump its suddenly unfashionable pair in the bin and rush out to the local Sunglasses Hut, where this year’s model was selling for €129.
It turns out that, in our haste, we ended up paying way over the odds for our shades and, if we’d only taken a more considered approach to the purchase, we could easily have shaved at least 30 per cent off the price.
Clutching our pricey new purchase, we went online and, after less than 15 seconds, found the same pair selling on Amazon.com for $100 (€70). With delivery charges included, the final total for our glasses was €100. There was even better value to be found on Ebay, where a brand new pair of Clubmasters could have been ours for just €85, including delivery.
Buying glasses of any description sight unseen is not entirely risk-free. They might be too big, too small or too fake – the €5 Ray Bans from Malaysia, in particular, seemed just a bit too good to be true – but, if you take sensible precautions and sensible measurements, you can avoid most of the pitfalls and snag yourself a real bargain.
We spoke to Ellen Mac Nally of Mac Nally Opticians on the Green in Dublin where some of the trendiest (and most expensive) sunglasses are to be found. Unsurprisingly, she cautions against a web purchase. “People with tiny faces come in with huge glasses they have bought online. They are literally falling off them and they ask us if we can adjust them but there is only a certain amount we can ever do.” She says that, despite the downturn, people are still spending “a fair amount of money” on sunglasses they believe to be of high quality. While people are no longer quite as keen to spend more than €1,000 on designer handbags or shoes, the market for €250 Chanel or Gucci sunglasses is holding firm, she says.
But why would anyone spend such sums on sunnies when Penneys is selling pairs for a scarcely believable €3, and Top Shop, Boots, MS and Dunnes Stores have all manner of trendy pairs for €18? We took a straw poll of users on Twitter last week and the almost universal opinion was that it is never worth spending serious money on sunglasses that you are likely to break, lose or scratch in your pockets or handbag.
Mac Nally is not for turning. She insists that “you get what you pay for when it comes to sunglasses”. She says that cheap glasses can damage the eye by allowing the pupil to dilate in the shade without offering UV protection.
Such a fear is probably unfounded, unless the glasses are really, really cheap – and possibly made by a child who has stuck coloured sweet wrappers over a regular pair of glasses. It seems unlikely in the extreme that the stores named above would make bogus UV claims about their products and risk losing millions in law suits.
William Power, a consultant ophthalmologist at the Blackrock Clinic, certainly downplays the risks and says price is not be a factor in guaranteeing safety.
“So long as they have full UV protection then the customer is paying for style, brand and durability after that,” he says.
cpope@irishtimes.com
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