Every week a different FADER staff member will pick a clothing item or accessory that he or she has lately been spending a lot of time with—or would like to—and write a little love letter to it. We would’ve done a column on who we’re dating but that seemed a little bit much. This week Alex talks about the Shwood's Florence Select sunglasses.
One time, a friend told me that I should never not wear circular frames. Sounds like a pleasant enough thing to say but it was really meant more as a warning than anything else—I was rocking what I thought were a killer pair of square-edged shades that I fantasized looked mad futuristic but was made aware, by said friend, that the square was not my shape. "You look like a bro," she told me, her lips pursed and a bit lemony as the words left her mouth. Circles are it, she assured me. Circles are eternal, circles are symbolic, circles are classic. Or, more to the point, circles flattered my oversized schnoz and complemented my big chipmunk cheeks. Dually noted, I replied, and never wore a sharp shape on my face again.
When you're limited by shape, it can be troubling to maintain variety. I've got transparent circles, orange circles, basic black circles, highlighter pink circles, even leopard print circles. But Shwood's made my very first pair of wooden circles, a shape they call the Florence Select but that I call my ideal look. It's important to me to satisfy some basic style parameters, i.e. not looking like "a bro," but it's also important that I never look boring, that there's something interesting about the spectacles I've got on my face. Shwood allows me to cover all my bases, and, light as a feather, it's not just in the looks department that I'm feeling easy breezy.