Why Is Every It Girl Wearing These Nerdy Glasses? And Why Do They Look Good on Everyone?

When I was in sixth grade, I noticed that the writing on the chalkboard in the front of my classroom was a little bit blurry. I obviously decided to just squint my eyes and not tell my parents. The thought of having to get glasses at the time felt devastating, and so I decided I would probably be better off just struggling to read what my teacher was attempting to teach me. A couple weeks later at a doctor’s checkup, the seeing chart ratted me out. I was nearsighted, and I needed glasses pretty much immediately. I cried so hard my parents told me I could get contact lenses instead, and I’ve worn them now for as long as I can remember.

In the decades since, my insecurity over glasses faded when I realized that they weren’t some harbinger of uncoolness. But still, I never really wanted to be seen wearing mine outside the confines of my apartment until I saw the F/W 23 Miu Miu show.

Mrs. Prada always has a way of making me, and clearly everyone else, see something that was perceived one way in the complete opposite way. On her runway, glasses weren’t something you had to wear. They were something you wanted to wear.

Models wore them with sheer polka-dot dresses. They wore them with cardigans, high-waisted hot pants, stockings, and little else. They wore them with oversize hoodies styled as a dress and large beige blazers. The otherwise nerdy staple felt suddenly subversive, worn with “bookish” items styled in a way that made them sexy. I felt a lust for these glasses in a way I had never felt for spectacles.

Within days of being available to buy, the oval tortoise glasses went viral. It felt like everywhere I went in New York, I spotted a girl wearing a pair. It items aren’t hard to come by on the Miu Miu runway, but it was interesting to see something like a pair of glasses take off instead of a bag or a shoe. Of course, there were plenty of those, too, but nothing seemed as ever present as the glasses. And even more surprisingly, everyone looked good in them.

I hadn’t gotten a new pair of glasses in a while, so I decided to cave and finally bought the oval Miu Miu pair with prescription lenses. I’m fascinated by It items but don’t typically partake in the frenzy, because I love to wear things I rarely see, which is why most of my closet is secondhand or vintage. Sometimes the magic of an item is lost when you see it over and over and over again. But every time I saw these Miu Miu glasses, I just wanted them more. The effect they had on me was singular.

Perhaps it was because they represented something more than just a trendy accessory. They were changing the perception of glasses most of us held as little girls. Mrs. Prada always says Miu Miu is like Prada’s little sister. But I think Miu Miu appeals to so many different people because it reminds them of their younger selves, of the little girl still within all of us, who dreamed of what she would wear when she grew up. But instead of having to step into big-girl pants, she just gets to wear everything she always loved and a couple of things she can now not be afraid of. To wear Miu Miu is to have the confidence you always wished you had, to become the girl you’ve always been.