Author: Brandi Kiner

Find Your Personal Style

Posted on July 31, 2020

At all five of our Fort Wayne locations, you’ll find friendly, experienced, and stylish opticians ready and eager to help you find your own signature style. We believe not only are perfectly-fitting, vision-correcting eyeglasses essential to our overall health, they are a fun fashion accessory just as important as your favorite piece of jewelry. So many people wear glasses on a daily basis, and we feel everyone should be comfortable and see optimally every time they put them on.

At Pine Valley Longe Optical, our team of opticians — Sydney, Ceirah, and Emari — all love helping guests pick out a new pair of glasses! Our opticians want to help them not only find a pair that fits correctly, but one that appropriately matches their personality. And fortunately, all three of these ladies have great taste and expertise in frames and offer some of their insight into the best brands and tips for wearing a pair of glasses!

Sydney personally enjoys the Maui Jim sunglasses collection. One year she bought a pair for a family member as a Christmas gift, and now her entire family is hooked on the brand. Maui Jim is one of the premier brands in sunglasses, utilizing high-quality materials and craftsmanship. They back their product with a 100% guarantee that you won’t squint when you’re wearing them and their models have 100% UV protection, customizable lenses in different colors, and come with great customer service.

When helping guests, Sydney loves fitting the brand Masunaga. She looks to make sure that a guest’s glasses are centered, and they rest comfortably on the bridge of the nose when fitting them. She also considers the style of the person who walks in and often offers an option or two to the guest that is nothing like what they are currently wearing, giving the guest a new perspective. Although the guest might stay with their same style, more often than not they enjoy the look of the new style and will go with Sydney’s recommendation.

Ceirah is also major Maui Jim fan, but her favorite brand for opticals is Dutz, created and designed in Holland. She is fond of their durability (they are made of the same metal found in iPhones), their status as hypoallergenic, with lightweight and cool, funky styles to pick from. When fitting a customer for glasses, she places a heavy emphasis on comfort, ensuring the glasses fit the way the brand intended.

Emari enjoys the Garrett Leight and Mr. Leight collections based out of California because of their unique round frame options. When fitting other people, she often considers the eye color of the customer and then picks a frame that complements it. For example, if someone has brown eyes, she may look for olive-toned frames to match.

With so many frame and lens options and combinations available for your digital prescription, the process can be overwhelming, so Emari and her team hand-select several choices for each guest to help narrow it down.

Ensuring 100% guest satisfaction is the goal of every Longe Optical team member, so stop into any Fort Wayne Longe Optical today and our team members will be delighted to help you find your new favorite pair of glasses.

Helpful Hints for Selecting Sunglasses

Posted on June 11, 2020

At Longe Optical, we are passionate about eye care, which includes the eyewear we wear during the summer months! Many of our customers don’t realize how important sunglasses are and that they function as more than just a fashion accessory. When shopping for sunglasses, it’s important to understand exactly what types of UV protection you are looking for and what might happen to your eyes if you’re not properly protected.

 

Types of UV Radiation

The sun emits two major types of UV radiation that can cause damage to the eye: UV-A and UV-B. Overexposure to UV-A radiation can damage the macula, hurting your central vision. Too much UV-B radiation exposure can lead to damage in the corona and the lens of your eye.

 

UV Protection

When picking out a stylish pair of glasses, Longe offers a wide variety of frames that also provide protection for your eyes at an affordable price. It’s important when you’re looking for a good pair of sunglasses to not just grab the cheap promotion glasses you got from a local parade: quality is important.  When looking for a pair, make sure your glasses say “100% protection against UV.” A pair of glasses that just says UV protection most likely will rub off after one cleaning, as the UV protection is just coated over the lenses, not embedded into it.

 

Polarized Lenses

Not all polarized lenses provide active UV protection! Polarized lenses have a unique chemical coating that is designed to reduce glare from reflected light. Although it is true that polarized glasses and UV protection are often paired together in high-quality glasses, this is not always the case. Many cheap polarized sunglasses on the market don’t have any UV protection which is why checking for 100% protection in your pair is important.

 

Serious Conditions

Prolonged unprotected exposure to UV rays can lead to cataracts, pterygium, and macular degeneration in the human eye. Cataracts involve a clouding of the eye’s lens resulting in blurred vision; pterygium involves painful tissue growth on the eyeball; and macular degeneration leads to destroyed central vision when the macula in the retina deteriorates. If not prevented, these conditions can require surgery or cause loss of vision.

 

Although serious conditions in your eye might not be occurring now, be sure to schedule your annual eye exam today and while you’re here, pick up some stylish sunglasses with lenses that will both protect your eyes and keep you looking great this summer!

 

Helpful Hints for Selecting Eyewear

Posted on August 5, 2019

Girl wearing glasses
Now that you’ve scheduled back to school eye exams for the kids – what do you do if they need glasses?
Children’s eyes can change rapidly, so be sure your child has an up-to-date eyeglass prescription for the best possible vision and comfort before investing in new glasses.

There is no shortage of children’s eyeglasses and it’s important to keep factors like fit, quality, and fashion in mind. It can be difficult figuring out which glasses your child will be willing to wear — and if they will last longer than the ride home. Here are some shopping tips to help you choose stylish and durable glasses your child will love.

Choose a modern, attractive style
Eyeglasses have become a staple in the fashion world and kids frames are no exception. Ray-Ban, Candies, Lily Pulitzer, and others offer styles from classic to trendy, perfectly sized, and designed for any cool kid on campus. For a more sporty look, Nike, Oakley, and Puma all offer superior durability along with stylish design. And with a wide range of color options and modern shapes to select from, you can match your team colors in style.
Select the perfect lenses 
Children’s lenses should be made of polycarbonate. These materials are significantly more impact-resistant than other lens materials for added safety. There are a few ways to enhance your look and at the same time protect your eyes. One option is photochromic lenses, which darken automatically in sunlight outdoors in a range of colors to choose from. Another choice is anti-reflective coating, which not only enhances cosmetic appearance (no glare on lenses in those school photos), but they can reduce eye strain caused by digital device use.

Purchase a “backup pair”
Because children can be tough on their glasses, it’s a good idea to purchase a second, or backup, pair of eyeglasses for them — especially for those with a strong prescription who cannot function without his or her glasses.

We would love to see you and share with you what makes us special. With our one-of-a-kind kids package, all-digital eye care experience, exclusive frame designs, and personalized service, we are passionate about providing the best care to allow you to see and be seen!

Quality Is Key When It Comes to Sunglasses

Posted on May 28, 2018

Man in glasses

For many, sunglasses are far more than a pretty accessory — they are an important part of protecting eyesight. Something to always keep in mind when tempted by a cute or trendy pair of cheap shades — you only get one set of eyes! To protect your eyes, we highly recommend wearing sunglasses with high-quality lenses, as they typically offer more complete protection from harmful UV rays.

Hey, there’s a reason the FDA classifies sunglasses as a medical device!

We also strongly suggest choosing lenses that are polarized. If you’ve ever worn polarized lenses, you’ll know that they make a world of difference in how comfortable you feel in direct sunlight. Polarized lenses have tiny parallel grooves in them. Light comes bouncing in from at all directions, but only the light that is aligned with the grooves makes it to your eyes. Because of the way the grooves are aligned in the lenses of sunglasses, the glare you see from something like the sun reflecting off water is reduced.

Did you know that most “cheap” sunglasses actually just block light, causing eyes to dilate? If the lenses don’t also protect from the UV spectrum, then more of the harmful light gets in. This can cause significant damage over time.

At Longe Optical, we make sure corners aren’t cut by doing many of the steps of the lens creation process in-house. This way, we can oversee all the details, ensuring quality control and guaranteeing you get the exact product you paid for. We purchase our lenses from ZEISS, the industry’s premier lens manufacturer. ZEISS has been in business since 1846, and in addition to providing the highest-quality lenses, they even provide optics for NASA projects, like the Hubble Space Telescope!

We hope you’ll think twice about going the cheap route on your next sunglasses purchase and that you’re convinced that it’s important to not sacrifice quality for style or price. Having a high-quality pair of sunglasses should be at the top of your summer checklist, and you won’t find a better selection in Fort Wayne than at Longe Optical!