The advantages of tinted spectacles

Susie Bick, the designer behind The Vampire’s Wife, is a striking beauty: lunar complexion, ebony hair and the day we met, wearing my particular interest, pinktinted specs.

I’ve been casually clocking the rise of coloured prescription lenses for some time. Linda Rodin, erstwhile stylist and founder of an eponymous beauty range, always wears grey ones. She says it turns her necessary myopia-correcting glasses into a style statement. She’s right. You don’t really need to think about jewellery when you’re wearing an oversized glaze of colour across your face.

Bick’s have heavy black frames and a cat’s eye tilt (an excellent cheek lifter) and bring a punchy modern attitude to those romantic dresses of hers. Yin and yang it seems, are key:

if you have a cute, delicate or elfin face, you can be quite severe with your frames. If your features are stern, something more playful works well. Juxtaposing serious looking frames with pastel-tinted lenses brings a whole new layer of possibilities – so find an optician with taste you like.

You do need an optician, because there’s more to tinted specs than aesthetics. There’s a condition known as Mearesirlen syndrome, or “visual stress”, which is often triggered by too much screen-time. Symptoms, which include dizziness, discomfort, nausea and shooting eye pain, can be severe and Johnny Depp, inter alia, swears his blue lenses help.

Yellow lenses can also alleviate cases of eye strain, while layering different tints has helped some with reading difficulties. It’s fair to say that none of the evidence is 100per cent conclusive, but it’s worth trying them out the next time you go for a test.

Laura Imami, the founder and designer of Laura Imami eyewear (lauraimami.com), says prescription lenses are now available in any colour you desire. Sunglasses are following suit – and good news, “the depth of darkness is unrelated to UV protection,” she says, “so even those light blue lenses can give you the 100per cent UV protection you need.”