Great Shapes

The optically challenged have been peering through magnifying lenses for more than 1,000 years. But spectacles as fashion? That’s something relatively new, thanks to either Roger Bacon or the Italians--historians are cloudy--who in the mid-13th century decided to mount corrective lenses in frames. Monks loved them. In the 1800s, even people who didn’t read for a living were wearing them, and in the next century, with the advent of plastic, “glasses became part of the wardrobe,” says Jenny Benjamin, director of the Museum of Vision in San Francisco. Today they come in all shapes and sizes. See which one fits your face. Or your personality.

--Elizabeth Khuri