Ray Ban & Persol made by Luxottica - so what?

I've seen it mentioned here that the quality of Ray Ban and Persol isn't what it used to be.

Are they made or just owned by Luxottica?

Has the quality really deteriorated, or is it an urban myth, like the decline of post Prada Church's seems to be?

Anyone?

I've had Persols (can't find any to fit exactly like I want them to) and I don't notice them lacking in quality.

I like my RayBan's but the one thing I have issues with is that they fog up very easily being here in MN. Every morning I'm having to thaw them out after putting them on. Otherwise fit, finish and sun blocking are up to par with any other eye wear I've had.

I've got a pair of Persol 714s and I love them. Quality is exactly as I would expect and they are very well built considering all of the hinges involved in the folding frame.

Luxottica is a company that actually produces Ray Ban, Persol, Prada,etc.

Companies like Prada license their name to Luxoticca to produce eyewear. Eyewear of various fashion houses is always licensed out to a another cmopany to produce the eyewear. Though owned by one company the quality of the various brands varies greatly.

Also, Ray Bans vary in quality depending on the model. Some are made in China while others are made in Italy. The styles with polarized lenses, photochromatic lenses, etc are of pretty high quality but the styles with basic plastic lenses are pretty ******.

Persol is a much better pair of glasses in every aspect.

I own Persol and RayBan sungleaases and I've sold plenty of both brands. The Persols are of higher quality but I find them both to be excellent sunglasses.

My Persols are great. According to what's written on the temple, they're hand made in Italy.

I believe there are two grades of Persols though aren't there? I've seen some that say "handmade in Italy" and seem to be of high quality, and others that seem to have fallen off the Luxxotica truck (all authentic).

From my experience modern RayBans are of at least 2 types:

* fashion sunglasses (ie nicely-made and pretty, but without any special capacity as sunglasses) ;

and

* actual sunglasses (ie designed to save your eyes from the sun). The Wayfarers are the classic example of the latter, IMHO. There are many examples of the former.

Most of the Raybans in the former category, in my limited experience, are just tinted glasses of different colours.

I know little about sunglassses, technically, and would be delighted to be corrected. But my impression is that many $20 pharmacy sunglasses (eg Polaroid) do just as good a job at mitigating the effects of the sun on the eyes as much more expensive ones. In the latter category, in my impression, mostly people are paying for (a) looks and (b) durability of construction (maybe).

But this may be over-simple, and as I say I'd be delighted to be corrected in the interests of the advancement of knowledge!

Originally Posted by CatsEyes

Click to expand...

mostly people are paying for (a) looks and (b) durability of construction (maybe).


looks are important....

Years ago Luxoticca was one of my clients. Had a meeting and one of their top guys shows up with a suitcase loaded with bearer shares, worth about $ 20 million ...... Funny how the mind works then, for a minute I was tempted not to bring him to the airport

Originally Posted by cchen

Click to expand...

looks are important....

Well, yes. But if you spent a lot of money on some pretty-looking shoes that were no earthly use as shoes, you might wonder if you'd spent your money wisely...

I hear ya. I feel just as protected and stylin in my cheapo ray ban shades. $20 million worth of sunglasses followers? great.

This is a piece I wrote to another media-outlet, regarding Luxottica, and sunglasses in general. It is pretty much 'proper sunglasses 101', and I have copied it here:

START:

Well done, Luxottica, for wrecking what used to be a trusted brand. Obviously, when you bought this brand, there was no heritage covenant signed, to ensure the integrity of the brand, and so, we now have this proliferation of cheap, nasty plastic lenses masquerading under the once-respectable Ray Ban name.

Some 75% of so-called Ray Ban 'sunglasses' now, are not equipped with borosilicate glass lenses. Instead, the majority of this brand's wares have cheap, acetate plastic lenses which provide little, if any, protection from UVB/Blue Light.

Twenty-two years ago, the Ray Ban brand, in the USA, then not owned by Luxottica, introduced a series of poster adverts, proclaiming, rightly, the optical superiority of Ray Ban lenses. In the advert, two lenses were juxtaposed. The one on the left - the Ray Ban - passed every test in a straight-lines reflection test (cross-hatch squares, with no elipses). This showed the craftsmanship of zero-distortion Ray Ban lenses, even with steep base-curve aviator lenses, right to the frame-beveling.

The other lense featured in the advert was a 'how not to make a lense' lens: it had wavy lines reflections (not unlike looking at tiling at the bottom of a swimming pool on a windy day), indicating the tell-tale bowing and distortion of a badly-made, cheap lens.

This advert, over two decades ago, showed the superiority of Ray Ban, optically. It gave the impression that opthalmologists would be proud to recommend such glasses to customers, for general wear, and in UV-intense environments.

Just over twenty years-on, and the Ray Ban name has been sold down the river by a buch of craven idiots at Luxottica, with the collusion of a young, receptive audience who are clueless about what constitutes a good pair of sunglasses.

Every single pair of the 'new' plastic-lensed Ray Bans I have looked at suffered from bowing and distortion to a greater or lesser degree. This means that the majority of Ray Ban 'sunglasses' today constitute the cheap, plastic, inferior trash which Ray Ban adverts of 1985 so rightly castigated. Those adverts implied that, if one purchased such cheap, distorted lenses, then one was being defrauded, and ripped-off, and ill-serving their eyesight by such a purchase. So, doesn't the new developments in Ray Ban lenses mean that you, Luxottica, are guilty of all these things?

Luxottica love these plastic lenses: they're profitable in the extreme, because they're made in cheap contract-toy-factories. No one is going to convince me that the protective properties of the Glass Ray Ban RB3027 or RB3025, are shared by the Paris Hilton 'bug' Ray Bans featured in the new, flashy rayban.com website. You will notice that not in the website, nor in the catalogue given to optical store-outlets by Luxottica, will you find a definitive statement about the composition of the lenses, beside the photos of the 'sunglasses' featured. Luxottica Oakley play this game, too, with a made-up name for polycarbonate and plastic lenses, which conceals the provenance of the materials-used.

And the advertising strapline for the past two years, promoting this junk? 'Ray Ban, Genuine since 1937'.

Genuine what?

This is advertising fraud, and it is consumer fraud; if the latter, gullible lemmings that most of them sadly are, could discern the difference between well-made glass lenses (such as Serengeti Sedona, Maui Jim Glass, or Oliver Peoples VFX-glass), and rubbish such as Luxottica is now promoting, under the once-admirable Ray Ban moniker.

Shame on you, Luxottica.

The ocular chic of the new frame styles cannot hide the trash-lenses they encircle.

As I walked down a very sunny Oxford Street in London, last week, I could see people in designer 'sunglasses' such as Tom Ford, Miu Miu, over-rated distorted Oakley Gascans...and the new Ray Bans, squinting behind their lenses. These people paid in excess of £150 each a pair for these pieces of junk...and they're SQUINTING? I had no such visual discomfort in my Serengetis.

Again, shame on you, Luxottica, I fully expect your marketing putzes to wreck the Persol brand, yet, with plastic lenses. Go on, do it. You did it to Ray Ban, so why stop there?

END.