Oval sunglasses with black and grey tinted lenses

Why these rimless sunglasses look different up close

Most shapes in a sunglasses drawer are drawn by the frame. Here there is no frame to draw anything, so the outline is whatever the cutter left behind, and what the cutter left is a sequence of straight sections. Step back and your eye rounds them off into a curve. Step in and the corners reappear, each one catching the light at a slightly different tilt. That shift between the far view and the near view is the whole character of the model.

Where the scalloping sits

Along the upper edge, and carrying on down past the outer corner, the bevel has been notched into a row of small half-moons. Below that point the notching stops and the bevel reverts to a plain finish. Because the notches are cut into thickness rather than raised on the surface, you read them as pale marks against the darker glass rather than as a texture you could feel with a fingertip.

The metal, piece by piece

Nothing clamps round the lens. Four separate pieces of gold-coloured metal do all the holding, and between them the cut edge is left completely bare, which is why the pair looks lighter than its size suggests.

Wearing them through the day

Because the tint is heaviest across the top band and thins out towards the bottom, what you see through the lower portion keeps much closer to its ordinary colour. That suits a long afternoon outdoors, where glances up and glances down are not the same task. For a look at the other silhouettes on the shelf, browse the pairs cut without a surround, and if you are putting a whole summer outfit together, the small pieces that finish a look are worth a scroll.