White transparent heart-shaped glasses

Rimless heart-shaped glasses with clear lenses

Hold the pair up towards a window and the outline shows twice over: once as the flat shape of the lens, once as a thin bright line running all the way round it. No metal rim is doing that work. The heart is cut into the lens itself, and the edge of that cut has been bevelled so it throws back small points of light rather than sitting quietly inside a frame. Only the bridge bar and the two short arms that carry the nose pads interrupt the front. The rest of the shelf is gathered in our eyewear for a summer wardrobe.

An edge that reads as highlights, not as a line

A rimmed pair draws its shape with one continuous stroke of metal, and you read that stroke before you read the lens. This design does the job the other way round. The bevelled edge catches light in short flashes that shift as you turn your head, so the heart is described by brightness rather than by a drawn border. Straight on, in a dim room, the outline almost vanishes. At an angle, in daylight, it is the first thing anyone spots.

From behind, nothing changes

Photographed from the back with the arms folded, the pair keeps exactly the shape it has from the front. A rim would stand proud of the glass and hide that edge from this side. Without one, the same faceted outline is there whichever way round the pair is held, which is why the heart still reads in a mirror or over someone's shoulder.

Gold-toned arms, black tips, clear lenses

Next to denim, the metal stays quiet

With no rim to mark where the lens stops, the face stays open and the pair earns its attention from a three-quarter angle, when the faceted edge takes the light. Worn over a denim jacket the pale metal settles against the blue instead of fighting it, and the eye ends up on the step from that metal to the black tips with their gold teardrop. Those tips are the only part of the pair that is not metal, and they put a visual full stop right at the ear.