What laser eye surgery has done for the eyeware industry
As a young boy (roughly 8 or 9 years) I stated developing headaches after long days of reading the blackboard at school, so my mom an dad took me into the eye doctor and I got my first pair of glasses. The selection was limited with the majority of glasses available to me being on the rather unattractive end of the design perspective. Over the next 10 years or so I made my way through what was a very minimal selection of eyewear trying to find the most attractive pair I could. Then about half way though my college education I went in for an eye check-up and was told that my eyes had corrected themselves. I no-longer need to wear the goofy looking pair of glasses I was sporting at the time. As a result I never underwent the phenomenon of laser corrective eye surgery that swept the Nation in the 90’s and early into the new millennium. As the popularity of this surgical procedure become more and more mainstream it seemed that almost no one was wearing eye-glasses anymore. You might imagine that this would have resulted in an even smaller range of good design choices in the already anemic selection of eyewear available, but nothing could be further from the truth. It appears that the introduction of laser eye surgery has actually infused the eyewear business with an improved focus (full pun intended) on design. Proof of this can be found in the collaboration of German based eyewear manufacturer Mykita and a varierty of Avant Guard and fashion forward design industry stars including Bernard Whillhelm, Herr Von Eden (via Bent Angelo Jensen), Marios Schwab, Romain Kremer and Flash SS2010 M. Mykita was already offering the eyewear industry some of the more stylish lines of spectacles available, but the introduction of the these Limited edition collections show the Berlin based company’s recognition of design as the differentiating factor between themselves and the rest of the now rather competitive eyewear industry.
