From the street to the runway, eyeglasses have emerged as the accessory of the moment: part fashion statement, part beauty angle. The presence of a pair of frames sitting on one’s face naturally influences one’s makeup choices as well—as evidenced in fall collections such as MaxMara, Rochas, and Paul Smith**.** Vogue asked a handful of bespectacled beauties for their best makeup strategies:
Green-eyed brunette Anna Laub, founder of the optical brand Prism, gravitates toward pale pastel frames which flatter her skin tone, and her wardrobe. This spring, she’s wearing Prism’s rounded-off square Antwerps in rose gold, a pair of large square New Yorks in clear, and the rectangular-shaped Romes in camel. “I look at glasses as accessories that complement your face,” says Laub, who wears hers with a similarly pale lip (Bobbi Brown’s Beige 11 gloss or Instant Light from Clarins) and a lick of liquid liner (Rimmel’s Glam’Eyes in Black Glamour). Fashion-wise, this puts her firmly in the MaxMara camp (on whose runway models wore amorphous, square peachy goggles over a barely there canvas)—except for when she adds a swipe of purple eye shadow, or a pronounced vermilion lip for a stroke of evening drama.
At the other end of the spectrum, actress Abigail Spencer (who you may know better as _Mad Men’_s Suzanne Farrell or as Katie in February’s release of This Means War) offsets her all-American beauty and tumbling dark hair with a rotation of heavy, scholarly frames in clear, gray, and black, by Italian brand Super. “My prescription is slight, so they’re really just for fashion,” she says of her habit of slipping on a pair like a final layer of makeup. “My features are delicate, so if I cover my face with glasses, I need to amp up my eyes.” Translation: lashings of L’Oréal Paris’s voluminous mascara and a curve of M.A.C.’s pencil liner across her upper lids for day; for evening, she adds a wash of shimmery brown shadow. At the recent shows, this smoldering bookish-beauty attitude was in evidence at Paul Smith, where makeup artist Petros Petrohilos emphasized sultry, dark lids behind the designer’s new collection of oversize specs.
Makeup queen Bobbi Brown—who has worn glasses for fifteen years—went as far as creating the limited-edition Tortoise Shell collection of muted autumnal shades last fall, especially with girls-in-glasses in mind. “I’m always asked for makeup tips,” she says, “and to me, there are two choices: Either play up your eyes, or don’t wear any makeup and just put on a lipstick.” (Recall Rochas’ fall show, where makeup artist Lucia Pieroni paired a deep, black cherry lip with an oversize pair of oval tortoiseshell glasses.) For her own daily routine, Brown—who keeps it classic with Selima’s rectangular, black-rimmed Alabama frames—sticks to her gel liner and smudge-proof mascara, which she notes she generally applies in the car. “I get addicted to the whole look of glasses—and don’t need to worry if my concealer has worn off,” she confides.
Whichever feature you make your focus, Brown advises one golden rule for all: “Fill in your brows! Women forget they’re still on show!”