Sohaila 098

For the final section of her photo shoot, Sohaila kindly obliged to pose in half a dozen glasses with myodisc lenses. The "Ladies behind crystal veil" project is not just about frames but also about lenses.

Here Sohaila poses in the most beautiful glasses from my collection, made by Flair over twenty years ago. The frame is beautiful and especially suitable for blondes. The lenses are blended myodiscs (also called  Lentilux). This was an invention from the early 1980's. It's aim was giving extremely shortsighted people an alternative for the traditional myodisc glasses.

A myodisc lens consists of a central "bowl" (with the visual  correction required) and a surrounding carrier lens which is usually plano or magnifying. The traditional myodisc glasses were often seen in the streets of my native Amsterdam until contact lenses became widely available in the late 1960's. Somehow, ladies in myodisc glasses seemed to be a bit shy when I looked at them. Perhaps this had to do with the fact that myodisc lenses were only used when ordinary lenses became too thick to be fitted in glasses. Call it a visual stigma. Blended myodisc lenses brought a more attractive alternative in an aesthetic way. The down side was that the gradual transition from "bowl" to carrier lens further reduced the field of view. Also, it took quite a while to get used to the ghostly images caused by the transition zone between bowl and carrier lens. The remedy was looking straight ahead and turning the head in the proper direction.