Trendy sunglasses to suit every dress and style

Trendy sunglasses to suit every dress and style By Uma Nair, New Delhi: Bold, beautiful and evolving - sunglasses have become the thing to indulge in, with foreign brands offering picks from the vintage 1980s style to the trendiest ones.

With Dior and Chanel opening their design stores in New Delhi and Mumbai, one can now choose from classic Hepburn shades to Elvis Metal Retro styles or settle for Ray Ban or Nour Eyewear.

Sunglasses have now outpaced the purse when it comes to status shopping. Trendsetters, celebrities and fashion icons are still wearing big, round, designer sunglasses this year.

It is no longer enough to own a pair to protect your eyes. Just as women own several bags to go with their different outfits, women in India are now picking sunglasses to create multiple looks.

"In the West, sales are driven by sightings of shade-wearing celebrities such as Mary-Kate Olsen, Nicole Richie, Demi Moore and Lindsay Lohan.

"There is an increase in the number of designer choices and the relative affordability of the sunglasses compared with other designer goods," says a shopper at a new Dior outlet.

"People actually feel like a movie star when they put them on," said a 16-year-old schoolgirl who walked in to buy herself a pair for her birthday. "The bigger the lens, the more important you look."

"Sunglasses are an important part of the full 'look', a necessity rather than a luxury," says Shirin Mathews, who picked up a pair as a gift from her thoracic surgeon husband Satish Mathew of Kailash Hospital here.

At Visual Aids in South Extension in the capital, sunglasses are more than just ubiquitous accessory.

"People are buying wardrobes of sunglasses," says a company official.

The options for sunglasses are many - large and plastic, aviator and vintage and metal. Plus an array of accoutrements, like arms that hinge. Gucci, for example, has a bridle bit.

There's a lot of white and the usual black and tortoise rims and "cosmetic colours" - face-flattering shades like rose, pink and clear for women who want to make a statement.

"I have a collection of sunglasses and love selecting a different pair to coordinate with the outfits I wear each day," says Madhulika Bhattacharya Dhall, public relations manager at The Park hotel. Madhulika's first gift from wine merchant husband Aman Dhall was a pair from Chanel.

"The various colours, shapes and sizes help complete my look and bring the finishing touches to every outfit - from cool businesswoman to the night party goer," she says.

The number of sunglasses sold in the city of Delhi itself has increased more than six percent since 2004, according to sunglass retailers. The sales saw an increase of three to five percent in the previous five years.

The range is varied - rhinestone Yves Saint Laurent shades priced at Rs.5,000 to faux-tortoise Isaac Mizrahi shades at Rs.3,000, Gucci shades for Rs.2,700 to oversize no-name shades priced at Rs.1,000 at smaller stores.

Sakshi Dureja, public relations manager of Taj Group here, has more than five pairs which she deliberated over obsessively before buying. She has two pairs by Chanel, a Dior and one each by Gucci and Ray-Ban.

"I went on a mission to find those sunglasses," she said. "I had seen model Yana Gupta wearing these huge Diors, and I thought, 'If she can pull them off, I can pull them off', because people say she's got a little face like mine."

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