Thursday Tips, Tricks & Tools: Havin’ It Made In Your Shades.

Welcome to the first post in the new Thursday Tips, Tricks & Tools series, right here at Chic Critique.  We’ll be shaking things up a bit each Thursday, stepping out of review mode to give you a weekly dose of how-to in the beauty/fashion/skincare arena.  We ourselves, Jo-Lynne, June and I, know how-to do things.  One of those things is "surf the web to find information on how-to do stuff we think you’d be interesting in knowing how-to do," which is a significantly good thing, ’cause the remaining stuff we actually know how-to do would fit in a very small thimble.  With a false bottom. 

Which is why we’d love YOU to share your own beauty how-tos, too.  Just write up a how-to post and submit it to Chic-Critique@live.com.  We’d love to share how YOU do what you do, when you do that voo-doo you do do.   Entries are subject to approval and editing, as always. Come on, people, join the fun!

Look at all those pretty women, would you?  Today’s how-to is all about selecting the right sunglasses for your own pretty face.  And it IS pretty.  So hush up.  I am NOT here to critique the glasses these beautiful women in my life have selected.  These women are my bloggy friends and my own sister, (oh, and I’m in there, too) so I shan’t be touching their amazingly good taste with a ten-foot pole.  Mama knows what side her bread’s buttered on, folks. 

I just thought ya’ll’d enjoy a little photo essay showing sunglasses on REAL women, moreso than if I slapped up a bunch of stock photos of those famous-types who have real-live, live-in stylists and can spend a couple grand on a pair of shades and still afford to take the poodle the spa for a honey-lemon rub-down the next day, while the rest of us go down to the local five-and-dime and decide what glasses to buy based a couple glances in the 2" x 3" mirror duct-taped up on top of the light up plastic glasses-go-round that shows a scrap of face the size of a postage stamp (with most of that tiny sampling being taken up by the ginormous neon BLOCKS 100% OF UVA/UVB RAYS! tag hanging down right where our noses should be), plunk down our $5.99 plus tax and go home with the glasses tossed in a bag with half a gallon of 2% and a tube of Crest ®.

Seriously, they are lovely ladies, and some of my favorite bloggers.  You probably even know a few of ’em.  See if you can guess ’em all, including which one’s my sister, then click on their photos to get to their fabulous blogs and find out if you were right.  It’ll be a hoot.

Now, on to selecting the right glasses for you.

Do you know what shape your face is?  Faces can be round, square, oval, oblong, hearts, triangles, diamonds, spades, clubs, aces, kings, queens, or jokers. 

Ha! Gotcha.  No, really, they CAN be round, square, oval, oblong, hearts or triangles, and some add diamonds, too.  Which makes sense to me.  Go hold all your hair back away from that pretty face and look in a mirror to see, if you haven’t already, the pure shape of your own face.  If you need help deciding what shape lies there before your own eyes, take a look at this chart.  Take a nice long gander, people – you need the right answer to this question to proceed with sunglass selection.

Now, here’s the deal.  You are looking for a pair of glasses that BALANCES the striking feature of your face shape.  Apparently, the oval-shape is what the human eye sees as "the perfect face shape," so you’re looking to find a frame that will help bring your own shape closer to an oval.  Glasses that take into account the length, width and curvature of your face will strike a harmonious chord visually when they are perched up there, so for example, if you have an oblong face, or a long nose, you can minimize the length of your face by wearing glasses that have tallish (long from top to bottom) lenses and whose bridge sits lower on the nose. 

Or if your face is round – about as wide as it is long, you can lengthen the line of the face by wearing slightly wider glasses with shorter lenses that will cover less of your cheeks and eyebrows.  You might also want to select a square or angular lens shape to give your face more structure. 

I’m not going to go into all the face shapes here, because the chart I referenced above shows all the different face shapes and suggest styles to suit each. 

Did you also know that your skin tone and hair style should play a role when you are choosing sunglasses?  Yes, indeedy they should!  If you have fair skin, you need a lighter-colored frame, like a brown tortoise-shell or even one with a faint tint of rose or amber.  The color of your frame should never compete with or wash-out your skin-tone.  Darker tones like olive or golden skin can stand up to a darker frame, but may still be too light for a pure black frame. 

And hair-wise, you want a frame that compliments your hair’s style and texture.  And much like the balance you’ve heard you should strike between your lips and eyes in a good make-up pallette, you’ll want glasses that strike that balance with your tresses.  If your hair is your crowning glory, full and flouncy about your face, and you want it noticed, select styles that blend along your hairline and don’t attract too much attention to themselves. 

If, on the other hand, your hair is short, or cut just to flatter your facial features but not necessarily grab the eye, you can dress up your face with a more trendy or eye-catching frame. If you have long hair, take a look at your prospective new glasses with your hair up, and then again with it down, to make sure the style works with both.

To make the BEST choice for your face, you need resources galore.  So I’ve got ’em pulled together for you.  Take a look at the sites linked below to get the full story and make your final selection. 

MSNBC.com’s "Debunking 9 common myths about sunglasses."

unitedshades.com’s "Choosing the right sunglasses for your face."

BellaOnline’s "Choosing Eyeglasses for your Face Shape — Frames that Flatter."

FramesDirect.com’s "Face Shape Guide"

And of course, before buying any sunglasses, check for their sunworthiness.  Sunglasses should offer you optimal protection from the damaging rays of the sun, first and foremost. Look for that neon tag people.  It should say UV 400 Protection, or Blocks 100% of UV Rays.  If it doesn’t, I don’t care if those glasses make you look like Audrey Hepburn, you pass those badboys up, okay?

I mean, you’re NOT just buyin’ em to look COOL, are you? 

Heap big thanks to all the ladies above who so sweetly and so quickly provided photos of themselves with very little information about how I’d actually be using them.  Your beauty is ONLY surpassed by your bravery.