Butterfly-shaped black and gold sunglasses

Black butterfly sunglasses with wire-thin gold temples

A rectangular front finishes level. This one does not: each end stops higher than the bridge does, and that single difference is what the word butterfly is doing here. It is a front-on shape, which is why the deep and glossy black front carries almost all of the design and the side view carries almost none.

Two materials, two jobs

The plastic front does the shaping. The metal arms do none of it. They run straight back, pivot on a small gold-tone block at each corner, and hand over to a long black temple tip well before they sit behind the ear. Nothing on the side view competes with the front, and that is rather the point.

Not much gold, placed where it counts

Seen head-on, this is a black pair and nothing else. The gold-tone finish only appears when you turn your head, along the arms and at the hinges, and it never takes over. It reads as trim rather than as a colour, which is what keeps the black from looking flat. The plain black inner surface of the frame carries no print at all, so the pair stays quiet from behind too.

In a supermarket car park at midday

This is the pair that lives in the car door rather than in a case. A frame with no colour in it will go with anything: a work shirt, a striped top, a coat you have had for years. Because the lenses are evenly dark, they do not lighten in one corner and darken in another as you tilt them; they simply catch more or less of the sky. Rounds, rectangles and other butterfly fronts hang on the same rail, so the black frames sitting beside this one are worth a look before you settle on a shape.