Anna Laub

Girls with glasses have it bad. While male nerds were rebranded as tech billionaires, Girls + glasses = NERD, unshakeable, damanged reputations, scarred from the recesses of middle school.

"Everyone is looking for ways to differentiate themselves at the moment. As you wear glasses on your face, it's the first thing people see, so you want them to look exciting, don't you?"

So it takes someone with major fashion cred to make girls with glasses cool. Anna Laub is one of those girls: poised, naturally casual-chic, perfectly-symmetrical features, and blessed with long, glossy hair. She epitomizes style as a fashion journalist for New York Times' T blog and the Europe Editor of trend forecaster WGSN. So when, out of a spur-of-moment whim, she decided to replace her beat-up 8 year old glasses with something she created on her own, who else but the fashion elite stand in line, eager for the debut?

"My ultimate glasses-wearers are people like Johnny Depp and Yves Saint Laurent, whose glasses really add to their look rather than detract from it, as well as actresses like Sixties icon Jean Seberg or Charlotte Gainsbourg - and also Kelis who really wears them in a contemporary style."

"I was coming from a fashion angle rather than an optical angle and I wanted them to be like a fashion accessory, from the way you buy them to the way you enjoy them and wear them."

French Vogue's go-to blogger was one of the first fans for Anna's Prism unisex eyeglasses. "Allô ? Sexy secretary ? Oui ! C’est moi ! … I love ‘em!" Garance Dore exclaimed. Hip hop star Kanye West, art director Julia Restoin Roitfeld (daugher of French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld) wear theirs for photo ops. Insider favorites Polish music director Kinga Burza, i-D magazine fashion director Erika Kurihara, architect Rafael de Cardenas all lined up to model her line. Only the top fashion stores carry them: Colette, Browns, Dover Street Market, Opening Ceremony, Barneys, and net-a-porter.com. Glasses have had their fashion breakthrough, thanks to Anna Laub.

“I am obsessive about the combination of the functional and the aesthetic.”

Prism eyeglasses are artisian glasses made of hand-cut Italian acetate from an archive dating to 1849. As a trend forecaster, Anna traveled the world for fashion inspiration. From Mexico City's Bauhaus architecture to Tel Aviv flea markets to American 50s vintage frames, each pair embodies a slightly retro, yet classic style. Each pair is named after a different city: Rio "sexy and cury," New York "classically cool,"Rome "classic with a Mod-style twist," Paris "coquettish," and London "cool but a bit more edgy."

"These glasses are not supposed to take over your look but to add to it, and encourage whatever style or individuality you have already - it was really about taking people that had a great style story already and show how the glasses add to that."

Anna's je ne sais quoi took a dowdy concept and made it cool with all the tastemakers. A girl who can do that and still radiate such a genuine smile: tres irrésistible!

About Prism

Credits: Wendy Bevan, Prism blog, David Dunan, Garance Dore, Prism, Wonderland, O Magazine, Vogue UK, Ami Sioux for i-D, John Francis Peters for Fader, Elle