All eyes here

YOU know Georgina.

And how painful it is to be perching a Tiffany seat apart from her—ah, remember Georgina Wilson, the Tyra Banks of Asia’s Next Top Model?— who is putting on a pair of eyeglasses just to be chic while I hide my sight deficiency behind 3.50 contact lenses to act cool but inadvertently, becoming an outsider in their absence.

“Do those have grades?” I whisper to Dr. Adam Sia, the corporate optometrist of Sunnies Specs where Georgina functions as marketing director. He is assigned to sit the closest to her in the long table at The Pig and Palm, a newly opened restaurant in Cebu City. If she has terrible eyesight, at least it would be the only parcel of her physiology that would slightly diminish my jealousy and her famous Aphrodite effect: that a few of us are just born immaculate in the idealism of Truman Capote.

On this particular Tuesday night over dinner by a Michelin-rated chef, fresh from her Manila flight, she is in her usual magnetic force field, arresting our attention as she enters the space in a white trench jacket with stitch-piped wide lapel and oversized geek eyewear—poised at approximately five feet and nine inches tall without the fishnet wedge shoes she is standing on. Her hair, soft big waves, bounces every time she shifts attention from one guest to another, either with firm hand-grips or cheek-to-cheek French welcome.

“The last time I checked, her grade was around 50,” Adam replies.

“Can we still say she has perfect vision?” I have to investigate further.

“Not that perfect, anymore, 20-25 vision,” he continues. “Are you nearsighted?”

To my father’s dismay, the only grade that was progressing since fifth grade was my vision prescription. Then again, I inherited it from his genetic lineage—all eight of his siblings wore eyeglasses —along with my thinning hairline, wide forehead, and expanding waistline. “Heredity is a major factor. Depending on your eye care, it is less likely to decrease, especially if it’s hereditary. But at age 40, nearsighted men like you will experience a sudden grade decrease, and then you’d need reading glasses. Farsighted people, on the other hand, will continue to increase their prescription,” he says.

“Even if you think you are perfect, you need to have your eyes checked,” Georgina tells us.

“I never saw this problem coming until I noticed a change in my vision.”

It could be the loudest calling in the ear that pulled creative director Martine Cajucom and her to launch the optical shop Sunnies Specs—he answer to the customers’ need for eye prescription—two years behind their first venture of hip sunglasses line, Sunnies. With Cebu as its fifth installment (after Glorietta 2, SM Megamall, UP Town Center, and Trinoma) and the first outside the capital, Adam has to relocate here and lead the optometry team.

“People are not used to the kiosk-type examination area,” Adam says, describing the branch at the ground floor of The Northwing in SM City Cebu; it appears like a rectangular island of spectacles with a secret door leading to a room. In terms of spatial qualification, it is a revolution: the six-meter requirement for eye assessment has now been reduced to a meter due to the modernization of its apparatus, which can also perform other necessary tasks in one set-up. Mission accomplished in an hour.

In a sea of 100 styles, how do you pick the perfect pair?

Georgina suggests those with round features may choose frames with angular edges such as The Venice or Dillon. To complement the slender jaw line, your eyewear must be slightly wider than the forehead if you own a heart-shaped face. Oval faces are enhanced with bolder colors and silhouettes; on the other hand, those with square faces must purchase a pair with thinner frames.

“It’s stylish, and it’s affordable,” she gives me a smile.

But you’re Georgina Wilson. And the Lord God made you to get away with anything.

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