Clear frame glasses: how to choose a crystal frame (and why it is not invisible)

Clear does not mean invisible.

A crystal acetate shows everything: the thickness, the bevels, the metal core in the temples, the edge of the lens. It is the frame you choose for discretion and that then, against the light, turns out to be the most detailed you have ever worn. Here is how it works, which tones exist, how to match it, and the twelve frames, optical and sun, available now and shipped worldwide from Italy.

What crystal acetate is

Cellulose acetate is born transparent. Colour is added afterwards, in the sheet, in layers. When a sheet stays colourless, or is lightly tinted, the makers call it crystal. Frames are cut from crystal like from any other acetate: by hand, milled and polished for days. The difference is that the result hides nothing. A polishing flaw, a badly set hinge, an uneven thickness: in a crystal frame, you see it. That is why few brands do it well, and they are the same ones that work acetate best.

The three tones

• Colourless. The purest and the hardest: light goes through it and shows its edges. It suits defined features; on a very pale face it tends to disappear.
• Smoke: grey, transparent black. The easiest. From a distance it looks like a dark frame, up close it is transparent. It hides the edge of prescription lenses better. If it is your first crystal, start here.
• Coloured: blue, honey, amber, green. Chosen like a piece of clothing. Blue cools, honey and amber warm, green sits in between. In all three the colour changes intensity with thickness: the edge is darker, the centre lighter.

How to match it

Clear lightens. A shape that would be heavy in black (a Kuboraum Maske, an oversize Lesca, a VAVA geometry) becomes an everyday frame in crystal. That is why in this selection the clear frames are almost all on large shapes: the colour makes up for the volume.

With skin tone the rule is simple: colourless and smoke go with everything; coloured ones are chosen with the same logic as clothes, whoever wears blue well wears crystal blue well. With hair: honey and amber warm dark hair, smoke grey is the most elegant on white hair.

Optical and sun

As eyeglasses a clear frame is a discreet frame that invites a closer look. As sunglasses it is the opposite: the frame disappears and the lens remains, becoming the only element of colour on the face. A colourless crystal with a dark lens is the strongest contrast there is in a sunglass; a champagne crystal with a green lens, like Julius Tart's Seafare, is the softest.

Where to look

All optical crystals are in clear and crystal eyeglasses; the sun ones in crystal sunglasses. If you want transparency without seeing through, there are the translucent frames. For the comparison between materials, read titanium or acetate: how a frame changes.