Good Design #2 : French Connection Folding Sunglasses

I’ve been eyeing a second candidate for my Good Design series but so far I haven’t seen anything that special, so I decided to look back into the things I already use and that revealed my second Good Design award winner: a pair of sunglasses.

Sunglasses; we love them, we break them, we lose them! A good pair of sunglasses comes at a steep price and will require constant attention and protection.  Carrying around a case to protect your sunglasses, specially if you are travelling light, is a minor annoyance don’t you think? Not to mention remembering not to leave it behind somewhere. I always thought if only you could neatly fold them and put them in your pocket, a lot of these concerns will cease to exist! I have been buying cheap ones so I don’t have to worry too much. The problem with cheaper option of course is the quality of filtering and the lens that’s not very good. Funny enough however, the cheap ones you’ll never lose!

A few months ago at the airport, when I was killing time by walking around the maze of shops, I saw a very interesting foldable design by French Connection. Lucky for me it was on offer for half price (£25), although later I came to the conclusion that if I had paid the full price I wouldn’t have regretted it.

This well built and light plastic sunglasses are exactly what many of us, well.. some of us, need not to worry about breaking or losing them. It has a good and solid mechanism to fold/unfold and comes with a soft case too if you like to have one, but I feel confident just putting them in my pocket if it’s not too tight.

What’s neat about the case design, apart from it being a pocket size, is the built in cleaning cloth that turns this into a complete package.

My only criticism is when you need to unfold/fold them, or when taking it out from the case. It’s hard not to touch the lens, therefore, you need to clean them almost every time and wipe off the finger prints. You can of course just grab it around the edges but that’s not very comfortable. A Slightly larger bezel or handles could have helped but this is not a deal breaker. The filter is pretty good as well giving you a nice clean lens into the sunlight.