Res/Rei by eye size: a fit guide to an Italian acetate brand that names its frames

Res/Rei is an eyewear brand based in Treviso, in the north-east of Italy. Its own site says it plainly: "Our journey starts in Treviso, Italy." The brand's story page carries a timeline that begins in 2012, which makes it young by Italian standards and old enough to have settled into a way of working.

What makes the frames physically different is the acetate, and what the brand does before the acetate is cut. Res/Rei's site describes a holistic approach: "We design our frames and our acetate." That second half is the unusual part. Most brands choose a pattern from a supplier's book. Res/Rei draws its own, and says it takes its inspiration "from furniture to photography, from architecture to cinema movies."

You can see the consequence in the frames we have in stock. Every one is acetate, and most carry two colours or two patterns at once. Lily is red-purple over blue-brown havana. Hella is green over brown havana. Pyramid is pink over black. The listings describe the effect as two materials or two patterns put together with the join left showing, rather than blended away.

The second physical difference is depth. In acetate the colour sits inside the material instead of on top of it, and Res/Rei designs its own acetate patterns, each one, it says, exclusive to the brand.

The table below gives each frame's price. Every Res/Rei frame we hold is new and unworn.

The eyeglasses come with demo lenses fitted, the clear placeholders that hold the shape until a prescription goes in. The sunglasses arrive with their own tinted lenses: gradient brown in Nocturne, gradient dark brown in Begonia, and photochromic lenses in the Vivo, orange or turquoise.

Res/Rei does not number its frames. It names them, and the names are not decoration. They tell you which family a frame belongs to.

The brand's site divides the range into seven collections: Sculptures, Gentlemen, Architects, Diamonds, Eclipses, Flowers and Essences. It calls them "product families, each shaped by a distinct inspiration, ranging from design to art and fashion."

Our stock draws on several of them, and once you know the pattern the names stop being arbitrary.

Start with Flowers. Begonia, Lily, Lush, Hella and Vivo all sit in it on the brand's own site, which describes the collection as inspired by nature, with rich colours and soft curves. The shapes of ours bear the description out: rounded cat-eyes, softly squared fronts, no hard corners anywhere.

Sculptures is next, with Glow, Loop, Nocturne, Pyramid and Cheops in red. The brand describes this family as inspired by Italian sculptors, with "changes in thickness, curved surfaces and fading colours" and three-dimensional work on both the front and the back of the frame. That is why the gradient Loop fades from grey to pink, and it is why Cheops and Pyramid carry the names they do.

Gentlemen supplies Maestro and York II in brown havana and grey. This is the brand's men's family, and its site says each model carries a five-joint hinge and a decorated metal core inside the acetate. Both also have long temples, at 145mm and 150mm, which is not a coincidence.

Eclipses supplies Flare, in pink and black and in blue and green. The brand describes that collection as inspired by the movement of astral bodies, with fronts that reveal bright colour.

So a Res/Rei name tells you the family it belongs to, though not the shape: Sculptures alone covers oval, round, square and cat-eye shapes in our stock. The colour name after the dash tells you the rest. Glow — Red. Lush — Blue / Green. The table below lists every one with its measurements.

The eye sizes run from 47 to 54mm. That is a narrow band, and it is worth saying what it means. Res/Rei, at least in the stock we hold, is a medium-size brand. There is nothing under 47mm and nothing over 54mm.

The 51s are the centre of gravity: Glow in red, the Loops, the Flares and Cheops. If you have worn a 50 or a 52 comfortably in another brand, this is where to start.

Above that, 53mm holds Lush in brown havana, Lush in blue and green, Lily and Hella, and 54mm holds Pyramid and York II. Those are the Res/Rei listings that carry a Wide tag.

Below the middle, 47mm holds Maestro in light grey and brown havana and the Vivo sunglasses. Nocturne is 50mm and Begonia 52mm.

Eye size alone does not tell you how wide a frame sits, because the bridge counts once and the eye counts twice. Add the eye size twice and the bridge once and you get the approximate distance across the front. On that measure our Res/Rei stock runs from about 119mm to about 128mm.

The Vivo sunglasses, at 47–25, come to about 119mm. Glow, at 51–18, and Maestro, at 47–26, both come to about 120mm. They arrive at the same width from opposite directions, a larger eye on a narrow bridge and a smaller eye on a wide one.

At the wide end, York II, at 54–20, is about 128mm across, Begonia about 127mm and Pyramid about 126mm.

Most of the range clusters between about 120 and 123mm. Cheops, at 51–18 like Glow, is about 120mm too. The Loops and the Flares are about 121mm, Lush in brown havana and Lush in blue and green about 122mm, and Nocturne about 123mm.

These figures are approximate. They ignore the thickness of the rims and the small amount the front curves away from the face, so treat them as a way of ranking frames against each other rather than as a measurement of your head.

Every one is acetate. Not one metal frame, not one combination.

Res/Rei's own site says acetate is the main material it uses to manufacture its frames, and that the process "starts from a cotton flock." It also says acetate is "much more sophisticated" than plastic and made from natural sources. That is the brand's language rather than ours, but the physical claim behind it is straightforward: acetate is a sheet material, and frames are cut out of the sheet.

That is the part worth understanding, because it changes how a frame behaves. A plate of acetate is cut, milled and polished. The colour and the pattern are in the plate, so they run through the full thickness of the rim. A moulded frame has its colour applied to a surface; a cut one has its colour throughout. The listings for these frames make the same point in different words, and it is why an acetate rim reads as having depth.

Each of these frames is a single piece on our shelf, and when it sells it is gone.

Acetate has weight. An acetate frame usually sits heavier on the face than a metal or titanium one, simply because there is more material in it. What the listings do say is that acetate has weight to it, and that it holds an adjustment once an optician has set it. What you get for the weight is that acetate holds an adjustment. Warm it, bend it, and it stays where an optician puts it. A frame that can be set to a face and then keeps that setting is worth more day to day than a few grams saved.

On construction, the brand's site says its Gentlemen models carry a five-joint hinge and a decorated metal core running inside the acetate. Our Gentlemen frames are Maestro and York II. That is a feature of those models rather than of acetate in general. Acetate temples are adjusted with heat, and a metal core gives a set temple more to hold its shape against.

The shapes here are cat-eye, square, round, geometric, oval and rectangular.

The cat-eyes are Cheops, Lily, Hella, Begonia and Pyramid in pink and black. A cat-eye lifts the outer corner above the line of the eye, and the usual reason to choose one is to add width and height at the temples. It flatters a face that narrows towards the top and gives a round face some angle. These are not all the same strength of cat-eye: Cheops, at 51–18 with a 39mm lens, is a modest one, while Pyramid at 54–18 is emphatic.

The squares are Maestro, Nocturne in pink and brown havana, and the Lush frames. All of them are described in the listings as softly squared rather than sharp, which is the useful kind. A square front gives a soft or round face some structure without the hardness of a true rectangle. Lush in brown havana has a 44mm lens.

The rounds are the Loops and the Vivos. Round frames soften an angular face and a strong jaw. The Loop has a 47mm lens height, which makes it properly round rather than round-ish. The Vivo is a sunglass at 47mm across the eye.

The geometrics are the Flares, faceted fronts, in pink and black and in blue and green. Faceted means the front is cut in planes rather than curves, so it catches light differently as the head turns. They suit someone who wants the frame noticed.

Then the oval, Glow in red, at 51–18 with a 38mm lens, the quietest shape here. And the rectangle, York II, at 54–20 on 150mm temples.

None of this is a rule. The shape that suits you is the one that looks right in the mirror. Shape charts are a starting point rather than an answer.

Three numbers decide whether a frame sits, and eye size is not one of them.

The bridge comes first. It is the gap between the lenses, and on an acetate frame with no nose pads it is the only thing holding the frame up. Our Res/Rei bridges run from 16mm to 26mm, a wide spread for one brand.

At 16mm are Lush in brown havana, Lush in blue and green, and Hella, each a 53mm eye on a 16mm bridge, which is a wide lens set close together.

At the wide end, Maestro has a 26mm bridge, Vivo in burgundy and Vivo in pink 25mm, and Nocturne and Begonia 23mm. A wider bridge sets the lenses further apart and lets the frame sit lower and further from the brow.

If you have a narrow nose, a 16 or 18mm bridge will hold better than a 25. If the bridge is too wide the frame slides; if it is too narrow it perches and marks. This is the most common reason a frame that looked right in a photograph does not stay put on a face.

Temples come next. Most are 140mm, which is the standard length and fits most adults. Maestro is longer at 145mm and York II at 150mm. A 150mm temple suits a larger head, or an ear set further back. On a small head it will run past the ear and want shortening at the bend.

Lens height is the third, and it is the number most people never check. Ours run from 38mm to 47mm.

Glow is 38mm and Cheops 39mm. Loop in grey and purple and its gradient grey-pink twin are 47mm, and Lush in brown havana 44mm. In between sits a large group between 40 and 42mm: Nocturne, Pyramid, Begonia and York II at 40mm, Flare in pink and black at 41mm, and Maestro, Lily, Hella, Lush in blue and green, Flare in blue and green and the Vivos at 42mm.

Lens height governs two things: how much of your face the frame covers, and whether a progressive lens has room to work. The second of those deserves its own chapter.

We sell frames. We do not sell prescription lenses online, and nothing on this site fits a lens. Every Res/Rei eyeglass frame in this guide arrives with demo lenses in it; every Res/Rei sunglass frame arrives with its own tinted lenses. Glazing happens in our Arlington or Dumfries shops, or at your own optician.

Three things to check before you buy a frame for a prescription.

The first is lens height, if you wear progressives. A progressive lens needs vertical room: distance at the top, intermediate in the middle, reading at the bottom. How much room depends on the lens design, and your optician will tell you the fitting height the one you have been prescribed needs. In practical terms, the Loops at 47mm and Lush in brown havana at 44mm have plenty of depth; Glow at 38mm and Cheops at 39mm have less. If you are unsure, ask for that number before you choose a frame rather than after.

The second is lens power. A strong minus prescription is thick at the edge, and the thickness shows more in a wide lens than a narrow one. A strong plus is thick in the centre. Neither rules a frame out, but a 53 or 54mm eye asks more of a lens than a 47mm one, and a rim with some body to it conceals an edge better than a thin one. Acetate rims have body.

The third is where your pupils sit relative to the frame. A front that is too wide puts your pupils inboard of the optical centres of the lenses, and on a strong prescription that is felt rather than seen. This is why the across-the-front figures in chapter three matter more than eye size on its own. Our Res/Rei range runs from about 119mm to about 128mm. Nine millimetres is enough to change how a lens works.

Take the frame, or its measurements, to whoever will be glazing it before the lens is ordered. That is a conversation worth five minutes and no money.

The table in this guide gives the price of every frame, eyeglasses and sunglasses alike.

Every one is new and unworn.

We hold one of each frame. When it sells it is gone, which is true of every frame in the shop.

We ship frames only. Lenses are not shipped, and are not sold from this site. If you want the frame glazed by us, the frame and the prescription meet in Arlington or in Dumfries.

If you are buying without trying the frame on, the honest advice is to measure something you already own. The numbers are usually printed inside one temple: eye, bridge, temple length, in that order. Find a frame you like the fit of, read its numbers, and compare them against the table in this guide. If your current frame reads 50–20–145, then Maestro at 47–26–145 will sit differently on you — smaller lenses set further apart by a much wider bridge, on the same width across the front — and York II at 54–20–150 will sit wider across and longer to the ear.

Pay attention to the bridge before anything else. Eye size is the number everyone quotes and the one that matters least once a frame is actually on a nose.

Our returns terms are set out on the site, and worth reading before you order rather than after.

And if none of this settles it, come in and put one on. A frame on a face answers in ten seconds what a table of measurements takes a page to approximate. Ring ahead if you want a particular model waiting on the counter.