Lanvin by Mail

We should start this post by saying we never intended Hapsical to be one of those egotistical blogs that tirelessly documents the blogger’s every outfit and purchase (we have nothing against them, they’re often very fun to read in a voyeuristic way, it’s just that’s not our style). Nonetheless, we’re going to post about our little Lanvin present (self-purchased present that is: nobody loves us enough to buy us Lanvin, which is understandable!) that we just received by post.

You may remember that in our Paris post we recommended an optician, Marc le Bihan in the Marais (website here – at the moment it has no info other than the address and phone number), and we were particularly amazed by their range of Lanvin eyewear which is hardly available outside France. When we were there we had sneakily noted down the number of a frame we liked thinking we could then track it down in the UK, but when someone at Lanvin told us there were zero UK stockists, we decided to order direct from Paris. Being French (bless) they wouldn’t use email, but we managed to place our order with the right prescription after a few difficult semi-French, semi-English phone calls, and several faxes (we know, viva the 90s! we’ve become totally addicted to faxing* now... so nostalgic!)

Anyway, here we go… really cool (if we may say so ourselves!) black glasses, which are slightly 50s, slightly French intellectual, and have that current ‘look’ going on, without being nearly as clichéd as clear-lens wayfarers have become.





Yeah, yeah, we’re secret label whores: there’s something about the word ‘Lanvin’ that makes us instinctively happy.

These weren’t cheap, but hopefully the style is classic enough to last for a long time (and the lenses have been fitted very well – the French take anything to do with healthcare very seriously, which is why even the smallest French towns have several large pharmacies, and if you go to the doctor in France with a slight cold within half an hour you’ll have been diagnosed with a rare tropical disease, prescribed every pill known to man, and told to get your teeth bleached and your abdomen liposuctioned too!). Because we love the UK economy so much, the last two big things we’ve bought came from France (these) and Japan. Part of the reason is that French opticians are amazing. There may well be old rivalries between the British and the French but we’re more than prepared to hand it to them that their opticians (and, um, fashion brands) beat ours hands down.


* Pre-email, the secretive Martin Margiela used to only give interviews via an infamous Maison Martin fax machine… we love, we aspire etc..!