Review: Own Days Optical Store @ Plaza Singapura

I've been wanting to blog about my new glasses, for the longest time. It has been 3 weeks since I've worn them out - a time which I think is sufficient enough for a fair review. Again, all reviews here are done solely from my point of view.

As my friends know it, I'm almost as blind as a bat and I can never go out with my glasses/contacts. And it will be very hard for me to go under the knives for a lasik surgery cos I'm just afraid something will go wrong during the procedure. So, year after year, I've been in search of that 1 pair of perfect glasses for my eyes.

A little background, my myopic degrees crept in when I was in Secondary school..? Back then, I seriously thought that wearing glasses was super cool, and everyone will look good in glasses. Thus, I made a new pair of glasses with every passing year - mostly metal frames which will corrode in time to come. 

Until I hit my Polytechnic years, whereby wearing glasses wasn't a fashion trend anymore... And I put on my first pair of contact lens. It was painful, and uncomfy but for aesthetics sake, I had to insert the lens into my eyes forcefully - and I was sooooooo overjoyed when they were in. It was contact lens from then on, but as I grew older, my eyes got more sensitive. They were itchy and red, in just like 6 hours of continuous wearing.. It wasn't that bad in outdoor situations but what made it worst was the air conditioning system, that was super dirty and dusty - I really felt the urge to just wear my glasses all day long... It didn't help when I had to meet friends after work and all. BUT I've never ever worn my lens to sleep through the night (prolly just a short nap or two).

Back to my story - many pairs of glasses and fogging of the lenses, and loose fitted frames which will slip off my face when I bow, and ill fitted ones which will give me headaches... I've finally found THE PERFECT PAIR. I happened to chance upon this ad on Facebook (now I know why Facebook app works), and I just randomly click on it to see what kind of no-frills spectacles shop it was, as they mentioned on the website that wearers could claim their glasses in just 20 minutes. Amazing, eh.

Brand Story

I was wondering where this brand came from as they didn't really broadcast anything on their website. Well actually, I felt a little dubious when I couldn't really find out where were they from, and if they wrote that they are from Japan, I would have gone down in the nick of time. Uh huh... Anything Japanese always catches my attention =) Subsequently, I read up a little bit and realised that they are 1 of the largest optical shops in Japan, and they have 120 shops worldwide. Awesome much!

Price Range

Their website is really clean cut which makes it easy to find information, and 1 of the banners stated "All In One" Price and it ranges from SGD$98 - SGD$198. So nothing more than SGD$198, awesome! And that included the frame and a pair of 1.60 high index aspheric lenses fitted in. Of cos, when I was there, they did mention that since I had pretty high degrees per eye, there was another option to upgrade to the ultra high index aspheric lenses, or other fanciful lenses (progressive lenses, transition lesnses, polarized lenses and coloured lenses) at only a fixed price of SGD$100. I didn't as my glasses was light weight enough. :) Bringing me to my next point:

Aesthetics

There was this pair of frames which caught my attention on the website, but I totally didn't remember the model cos it was quite an impromptu visit to the OWNDAYS shop. I was just standing there, trying out all sorts of frames, without any pushy sales person trotting around with me (another + point). It was then I approached 1 of the staff and told him that I was looking for something light weight, something angular and of course, something in vogue. He brought out a couple of frames - though super pretty, they weren't that frame I saw online. He then went into the storage area and brought out this pretty pair - OT2025 Ultem C2 Tortoise Shell. The frames were the Love Life range - which is a collaboration with Maomi Yuki. The project of "Love & Life" came from a Japanese TV program named "Tokyo Brand New Girls". 

"Maomi Yuki, a famous Japanese TV personality, originally designed these two-branded frames taking her "life full of love" as themes. There are full of her thoughts in these two brands, "Love" with feminine, luxury theme and "Life" with daily, natural prettiness. You can enjoy these two brands with relative themes, which are trying to produce woman's on/off in their lives."

My dream frames! Reason why I didn't manage to find it off the racks cos it was a super popular pair and that was actually the last pair they have in the store, reserved by someone who didn't come down to collect it (such a pity!). They do reservations for frames for up to 5 days, after which they will release the frames for sale off the rack. Anyways, I was super happy cos finally, I got to try it on, and it fitted my face to the pea! 

"Frames made with ULTEM, a new material which have surprising-elasticity and feathery-lightness.You can use this in your life with matte, good-feeling texture. We adopted clear-coloured material with no metal parts to nosepad, in order not to make the nosepad standing out."

I totally love how the nose pads were designed, which you can see from the picture above. It's not the shape of the usual nose pads as well. They are bigger and higher, well fitted for the lower nose bridges of Asians (another brilliant innovation from the Japanese). I love the way which that frame sits on my nose bridge cos they do not leave marks. I have a couple of frames with plastic nose pads but somehow, they love leaving depressions on my nose bridge. Maybe cos those glasses were heavy or something but nope, this frame, with my high degree lenses are super light weight.

Experience

I was soooooo happy with my new frames but since I worn my contact lens out that day, I had to remove them and wait for 20 minutes before conducting any tests on my eyes. The pretty people at OWNDAYS then passed me a piece of wet tissue to clean my hands, and a white contact lens case to store my lenses, while I sat down to let my eyes rest for 20 minutes. The test was conducted by the guy who helped me locate the perfect frame. They had this super cool machine, whereby you just have to put your head by the machine and it will detect your degrees, and that is something I have never experience before in other optical shops. So after a series of test, the optician told me that I do not have any astigmatism, something which I've been diagnosed with previously. Double joy! So once he got my final degrees, he brought me to a place to sit (since I was quite blind), and proceeded to make my glasses, in another 20 minutes. =D

And here's the final result. For once, I'm soooooooooo satisfied with my glasses and how good I can look with them on. I'm just gonna wave all the branded frames good bye for they have not and cannot be able to fit as snugly as this pair of glasses. =D

Credits to OWNDAYS Singapore for images and quotes