Cool Shades

Last Friday my favorite sunglasses in the world snapped in two!

I loved them for how I imagined they made me look (perpetually glam, a harried movie star chasing her children about the city incognito). And they held a great memory. Jonathan and I had gotten them at Oliver People's on Sunset at a party where DJs played music with a big back-beat and beautiful shoppers quaffed foreign beers. Two salespeople fought over which glasses looked better on me (because both looked GREAT, of course!) They were called La Donna.

So when they broke I nearly wept.

My husband told me to go to Retrospecs & Co. This is the store owned by the two original founding parents of Larchmont Charter West Hollywood. The store is run by a husband and wife team. The business was born out of a college dream of Jay Owens. He loved old spectacles. So after college he began traveling around the country in an RV searching for and restoring old glasses from the golden age of eyewear. He would fix them up and sell them. Little did he dream that one day he would sell his glasses across the country--from Aspen to Madison Ave. And have his own store on one of the trendiest little strips in Los Angeles.

They are two of the coolest people you will ever meet. To me they embody the enterpreneurial spirit of America--before the world went corporate. They have huge hearts and a can-do spirit. And they are good businesspeople, too.

Jay and Marya's store is on Melrose--just steps from the Pacific Design Center and the Bodhi Tree. The shop is small and chic. Deep drawers are filled with the coolest glasses you have ever seen. And they know how to make you look good!

They pulled out Seventies glasses that made me look like Joni Mitchell or Elton John, and movie star glasses that made me look like Sophia Loren. But in the end they encouraged me to get some one-of-a-kind shades of gray-blue buffalo horn. I have never seen anything like them. They are a work of art. And in them--I tell myself--I am a work of art.

And, Jay promises me, you have never felt anything like Buffalo Horn. The specs won't slide and sweat like plastic. They meld to your head!

Check it out!