Prior to speaking a word, your look speaks volumes. Everyone has their own unique physical beauty and style that is expressed through garments of choice. The shape and style of your glasses can completely transform your perceived appearance. From sharp and alluring, to intellectual, cultured, traditional and sophisticated are all essences that glasses can aid in cultivating in unison with your look and personal style.
There is a common misconception that specific styles of glasses can only suit certain face shapes, this is false. Your preferred glasses are to be adapted to you, we are not meant to adapt to our fashion. Our style is an expression of us and should be suited to us in terms of personality and physical appearance. Glasses are not only a stylish, functional accessory, but can also highlight facial features, enhance the structure of the face through visual weight, and control your narrative to project your traits or characteristics that will work to aid in meeting your goals, from beauty and aesthetics to professional, scholastic, and social desires.
In this style guide, you will learn the meaning of your face shape, how glasses work on your face, alter perceived traits, and which pair works best for you in terms of style, face shape, complexion, and coveted image. As people, we are naturally drawn to faces as a focal point. The lines of clothing will showcase the face in honor of personal style, but accessories such as glasses further affect the way people perceive you.
Which begs the question, how do glasses do this? The overall design and construction of the glasses interact not only with the eye, but impact the visual lines of the tissues surrounding, eyebags, facial structure, and developed lines such as frown lines. The interaction of the glasses can unify, contrast, and/or distort facial features. This can mean highlighting cheekbones with frames that follow the lines of the face structure through unification, making your nose look smaller by enhancing the visual weight in the surrounding area through contrast, or even producing a greater symmetry upon viewing through the structural piece on top of the organic lines of the face, just to name a few highly sought after examples of line interaction.
According to popular beliefs in overall society, media, and culture, those who sport glasses appear to be more intelligent and trustworthy, but less attractive. This is not necessarily true in practice though, as it is highly dependent on the style of the glasses, the wearer’s face, and the interaction between the two. Many studies surrounding men sporting glasses suggest that specs increase their general perceived attractiveness. For example, a rimless pair holds increased perceived integrity, but not a decrease in attractiveness. Sunglass wearers are perceived as more attractive but have lower trustworthiness. While beauty standards vary from culture to culture and attractiveness is subjective, biologically people are attracted to symmetry. When speaking on beauty, this video will measure the applicable beauty of clothing through symmetry as this can be applied to every personal fashion, physical structure, and style of glasses.
People naturally have various asymmetries and this is charming as our unique lines give us our own looks. Most though, look to enhance their look. Glasses add symmetry and can be used to even out or hide asymmetrical oddities if this is a personal preference. The rule of thumb for this technique of application is the more angular the face, the rounder the glasses must be. The more round the face, the more angular the glasses. Faces of neutral structure are impartial and have more options within this technique. When doing this, the contrasting should carry through to the color of the glasses as this will further elevate not only through line but also hue. For the metals, reference your undertone. If you’re unsure of your personal color palette, The Personal Style Analysis Guide: Seasonal Color Palettes is available for a breakdown of how to harmoniously choose colors within your season.
This is a great technique if you are simply looking for the quote-unquote right pair of glasses, but if you are looking to sport glasses within your aesthetic while suiting your face in a coveted manner, there is a bit more to it. Let’s look further into face shape and the psychology of facial perception.
It is rare to perfectly fall into one box of face shapes as our faces all have distinct lines that give us our own beauty. By recognizing our lines and the overall tone of our face shape, we can better understand our innate looks and how to work with them in terms of style as well as personal goals. Jonathan Freeman, the paper’s senior author and an associate professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science states, “People form personality impressions from others’ facial appearance within only a few hundred milliseconds.” Author of The Wisdom of Your Face, Jean Haner states, “Your face shape tends to reveal your basic personality and your overall approach to life.” Facial characteristics reflect both elements that an individual is born with genetically, (nature) and qualities that they acquire during their life, they might disclose personality traits (nurture). We have our genetic factors and formidable personality aspects, for instance, a person may smile or frown often, the facial muscles, wrinkles, and lines of their face form according to their expressions. By adding glasses you create, emphasize, or transform through new degrees of natural lines.
Let’s begin this section with the heart-shaped face. This communicates traits of creativity, strong will, high intuition, and affection. This is a high contrast face as the face’s greatest width rests at the forehead and cheekbones, then tapers in towards the chin. Glasses that align with the innate features are frames possessing a deep base alongside modest wingtips that rest slightly wider than the forehead. Examples of glasses with these frames are D-frames and aviators. Other styles of glasses that match your personal style should be modified to rest in the same manner as these would on the face, hugging the lines of the width and carrying the tapered shape down. For perspective, square frames that hold a structure moving inward will embrace the face in a similar manner while retaining your personal style.
Oblong faces have a length higher than the width and a narrow jaw. This face shape is comforting, providing ease, and outgoing, yet mysterious. Traits of honesty are associated as the features tend to be softer due to the elongation. Rectangular frames will lean into the length and delicate features, uplifted designs such as a cat eye will draw attention to the curvature of features, and angular frames will provide sharper lines that can create balance through contrast for a more dominant look.
Next, let’s look into the square face shape, this means the length and width of your face are the same width, but the jaw consists of sharp angles. Those with this face shape are read as powerful, adventurous, blunt, high energy, and friendly in nature. This face is low contrast, glasses should be thinner in the frame to allow for prominence to remain intact, the width should be slightly wider than the cheekbones to highlight the eyes, and glasses with a curve will soften as well as add balance to the face if this is a personal goal. If opting for a sharper frame, choose a design that follows the natural lines of the face for harmonious wear.
Similar to square*, the rectangle face is neutralized with oblong* traits. This is a face defined by an elongated structure that is squared off. This face shape exhibits traits of logic, efficiency, practicality, and strategic nature. Thinner frames soften the face and give a more tender essence. More often than not, the square over round lines will unify greater as emphasis on the brow line will highlight the eyes better while a round frame will create perceived leading lines away through shadows.
For triangle, holding qualities of determination, sensitivity, driven nature, and high spirits. With a more narrow forehead, frames with heavier visual weight will aid in balance. The higher the detailing, the higher the shift in perception. The width should sit slighter wider than the jaw to unify the frame to the face. Design-wise frames such as d-frames, aviator, and cat eye will harmonize while contrast is created with rounder styles of frames.The more contrast, the more commanding on this face shape. With higher visual weight at the browline, the more uplifted the face will look, the lower the perception will create an illusion of downturned, serious features.
Next is the diamond-shaped face, this face is defined by prominent cheeks and/or cheekbones with both a narrow forehead and chin. This face structure holds qualities of honesty, detail-oriented, and highly articulate communication. Horn-rimmed glasses are the go-to, but oval frames also work well to balance the angular aspects of the face as the more geometric will emphasize the angles through contrast. A design with a rounded or slightly curved bottom will suit this face shape best to highlight the eyes.
A round face has an equal length and width that is curved, typically the facial features are soft and full. This face shape is read the most as kind, caring, amicable, young, and innocent. Because this face shape is like a canvas to add angles to, the glasses style will help to accentuate characteristics owing to positioning. Geometric designs will provide new lines of balance giving the illusion of further structure. Rectangular frames will elongate the face and create a thinner appearance by breaking down the overall circular shape, and frames of high visual weight up top will harmonize with the soft lines of the face to highlight the eyes, acting as a second brow bone.
Now that you understand your facial structure’s traits, you can style glasses to play up the traits that align with yourself, personal aesthetic, and coveted image. For instance, softening the angles of your face will bring out the more delicate traits. There are social factors to this as well, by applying glasses the shift in visual weight will shift impressions. By creating a low facial width to height ratio with your glasses in unison with your natural lines, agreeable, friendly and traditionally feminine traits are brought forth. By creating a high facial width to height ratio, the dominant, prominent, and traditionally masculine traits are highlighted.
These are essences that are added to a look upon wearing glasses, the execution of styling and your other garments will determine the prominence. By understanding your aesthetic and beauty, you can convey the traits carried by your aesthetic visually. By styling according to our traits, goals, and allowing our clothing to be a self expression of encompassing nature, glasses can be an accessory that joins together the internal and external states of oneself. Glasses join this together for truly embracive fashion to contribute to not only our physical vision, but also mental vision for the imagery of our lives.
