In Ben Franklin's day, elders with failing vision wore ready-made spectacles, primitive magnifying glasses in various strengths to help them read or sew.
Now, readers are becoming chic with a momentum made possible only by the sheer numbers of never-say-old baby boomers.
Each year from now until 2010, manufacturers expect about 4 million people to turn 40, the magic age when small print grows fuzzy. The industry is banking that this generation, never one to succumb quietly, will demand eyeglasses that are fun, easy to get and, naturally, all about them.
Just like Levis in the '70s, running shoes in the '80s and business cards in the '90s, readers for baby boomers are "one more way to express who you are," said James Spina, editor in chief of 20/20 Magazine, an eyewear trade publication.
"They're the hottest accessory in the industry," he said.
Beyond the plain vanilla glass ovals that sit on drugstore racks, ready-to-wear readers can be found in rhinestone, tiger print, and rainbow frames. There are funky retro rounds, serious small rectangles, foldables and wafer-thin glasses that fit into an outsized lipstick case. There are stick-on plastic magnifiers, sunglass readers and readers tinted to make eyes look whiter.
Linda Hall, 53, a retired executive from San Diego, received a pair of reading glasses concealed in a super-sized ballpoint pen for her birthday eight months ago. She wears them over her contacts and always takes them to the golf course. "I use my pen to tally up my score and use the glasses to see the little numbers," she said.
Unlike a pair of custom-ground prescription glasses, which can cost anywhere from $60 to $400, the molded plastic readers come in preset strengths, varying in magnification from +1 to +4 in increments of .25. Both lenses are the same. They cost as little as $7 in drugstores and grocery stores. Optical quality designer versions can run from $40 to $80 in upscale department stores, specialty stores and on the Internet.
In the last five years, ready-to-wear reading glasses have exploded threefold into a $332-million retail market, which will only grow as boomers become prey to presbyopia, the inevitable and incurable phenomenon that causes the lenses of a person's eyes to thicken and lose their ability to focus. Lots of people notice when their arms suddenly become too short to hold a printed page far enough away to bring the words into focus. But they have neither the time nor the money to visit an eye doctor and order expensive frames. Even then, some can't find the style they want.
