Many guys are at a loss when it comes to finding the right shades. If you’d like to invest in some great sunglasses but don’t know how to find the ones that would look best on you, here’s some help. The three things you need to consider are:
- Your wardrobe
- Your coloring
- The shape of your face
If you are going to be wearing your shades with business suits or sport jacket / tie combinations, you want to stick with classic tortoiseshell, black, or metal frames. On the other hand, if you consider wearing socks to be formal, casual shades and trendy frames often work best.
The darker your skin, hair, and eyes, the more frame and lens colors will work with your look. If you have lighter hair, eyes, and skin, you’ll generally look best if you stick to traditional lens colors like dark green and dark gray. Also, guys with light eyes: wear dark sunglasses whenever you’re out in the sun because light colored eyes are more easily damaged by ultraviolet rays.
Male face shapes usually fall into the square, oblong, round, inverted triangle, and oval categories, and your facial shape can help determine which frames look best on you.
Men with Square Faces
(image Uwe Strasser for flickr.com)
You can get away with frames that are more rounded, because it’s hard to make a square-faced man look girly. Carrera makes some great shades with more rounded edges.
Men with Oblong Faces
(image CarolinaJG for morguefile.com)
These are men whose faces are noticeably longer than they are wide. If this is you, then you’re lucky, because wrap-around styles were made for this type of face, and there are tons of on-trend wraparound styles available. Check out some of the styles by Arnette.
Men with Round Faces
(image Ashley Webb for flickr.com)
If you have a round face, choose frames that are large enough to fit properly, and lean toward rectangular frames with defined lines to balance out your more curved facial contours. A great-fitting pair of classic Ray Ban Wayfarers can also work well on rounder faces.
Men with Inverted Triangle Faces
(image Ashley Webb for flickr.com)
These men have broad foreheads and narrower jawlines and look great in shades with wider temples that draw the eye upward. Ray Ban Clubmasters and similar styles are terrific for this facial shape
Men with Oval Faces
(image FaceMePLS for flickr.com)
These are the faces that aren’t “too” anything, and if you have an oval face, consider yourself lucky because just about any frame will look great on you as long as it’s the right size, so have fun and try on those styles you never thought you’d be able to pull off.
If you’re just not sure what kind of face you have, or if the idea of trying on dozens of pairs of frames sounds less exciting than finally tackling that pile of dishes in the sink, try aviator sunglasses. A pair of classic Ray Ban Aviators in a size that fits your face generally looks good regardless of your facial shape. Plus, they go with just about any outfit, and you can’t get better protection for your eyes.
(image shadesdaddy.com)
