Are there any good resources for modestly priced sunglasses made for women with bigger craniums?

April 16, 2011 6:16 PM

I'm a petite woman with an extremely large head. It is difficult for me to find decent-looking non-RX sunglasses that don't painfully squeeze my head.

I've tried wearing men's sunglasses with the wire arms. They really make me look silly (as a quite petite woman) to the extent that my Grandmother pulled me aside one summer and asked if I needed $20 to buy some sunglasses of my own so I wouldn't have to keep borrowing my brother's. Right now I'm opting for comfort over style but I wanted to know if there are any better options. Bonus if the sunglasses are low in price, I tend to break/lose my sunglasses every 6 months or so.

Thanks!

posted by arnicae to Shopping (4 answers total)

Have you tried Zenni Optical? They sell prescription glasses, but you can order them with no prescription and tinted.

They even have a search option that lets you look for specifics like wide women's styles. You can even upload a picture of yourself and try the glasses out. That way you'll know if you look good. I used that feature and was pleased to find that what they showed on my screen was pretty much exactly what they looked like in real life.

The prices are really reasonable, they start at less than $10 for a pair of glasses and it's only $5 to add the sunglass tint. They also have great shipping prices, IIRC it's just $4.95 no matter how many pairs you order. You could easily get a pair of sunglasses for less than $20 all together.
posted by TooFewShoes at 6:38 PM on April 16, 2011

One thing you might consider is getting a pair of sturdy sunglasses in a style you like and then going to an optician to have them bent to fit. A good optician will have all sorts of softening & bending tools. (The last pair of prescription glasses I bought, the optician did an amazing job fitting them. Apparently, my head is bigger on one side, which is why it always takes so damn long to get comfortable in new glasses...until now.)
posted by epersonae at 7:16 PM on April 16, 2011

Not a petite woman, but two options I know of:

1. Check out cycling sunglasses. They wrap neatly and tightly around your face so they won't appear large, even if they are of the large head variety. I have a large head (as does everyone in my family) and I have been using "CAT 1 Prologue" sun glasses for the last several years based on reviews that stated they fit large melons like mine.

2. Maybe not available in your area, but I happened into a "Michael's" crafts store with my wife a few years ago and they had this huge wall of cheap sunglasses. I bought 2 pairs of "not too dark" sun glasses for $3 each which are perfect for driving as I don't have to take them off when I go into tunnels.
posted by Rafaelloello at 7:27 PM on April 16, 2011

I have the opposite problem (little face), and I've found Tifosi helpful because they give measurements on the width of the specs. This model, which says it's for medium to large, shows how the measurements are given for each style. If you can measure a pair you have now, you'll at least know that you need one bigger than that measurement.

A lot of the models are sporty, but they have sport/fashion crossovers, too. I've been able to find them locally, but when the local place didn't have something that fit me, that dealer called them up and had them ship in some smaller ones for me to try, so it seems like the customer service is pretty good. They aren't super cheap like those $10 knock offs you see everywhere, but they aren't so expensive that they're hard to replace (though some of the specialized sport models go up pretty high in price).
posted by BlooPen at 10:41 PM on April 16, 2011