let's face it, designer sunglasses are made in italy.

I have been aware for some time that I have a problem.  It began in Cairo, January 2009.  I bought a pair of Police sunglasses with a friend of mine, who bought Givenchy for 770LE.

...And what followed??

And then...

This was the last of them, I thought, surely one cannot find a more perfect pair of sunglasses than the Ray-Ban Wayfarer...  But no.  I was seduced, in November of 2009, by MANGO in Cairo...

And, most recently, most shamefully, a pair of Wayfarer imitators to counter-act my Wayfarer originals...

The first thing I look for in a pair of sunglasses is its weight.  You can tell if a pair of sunglasses has a perfect weight, they're designer.  Not that I care so much about owning designer sunglasses; 3 of the 5 pairs you see above are not designer sunglasses (MANGO does not count as designer!) -- however, it's just a habit I've developed, discerning whether certain brands of sunglasses are authentic by their weight, the materials they use.  Quality is important.  For instance, I was in a shop in Cairo looking for the (somewhere) above black wayfarers, and the salesman gave me a great deal on a pair of Ray-Bans - 510LE, about $90USD.  This is $20 less than most places.  The catch?  They were 100% fake, although they looked immaculate and like the real thing.  How could I tell?  The way they had written "MADE IN ITALY" on the stem.  Wayfarer doesn't write Made in Italy.  They write, Hand Made in Italy.

So, they might as well have been...

Let's face it, designer sunglasses are made in Italy, and there is no comparison.  I know, I know.  I have a problem.  Who else sits around on Friday night with all of her sunglasses sprawled out on her bed thinking, "Let's do a photo-shoot!"  What's sad is, I have 2 pairs of sunglasses I left out of this photo-shoot.  

To be fair, I just got back from a great class on BOLEOS with Fernanda Cajide, and my feet hurt, and I am only writing this post because I am waiting for a video I took to upload to YouTube so that you can all see some of the tango bootlegging I did tonight...

BE ITALIAN!

j.a.