"Covet" is a celebration of the mass accumulation of commodities. Basically, it's just seeing purchase-worthy stuff around Shanghai and sometimes purchasing it.

Item: Customized -- BESPOKE, if you will -- Sunglasses

Cost: 150rmb for two pairs (probably got ripped a bit but whatever)

Shop: It was called Baodao Optical Shop (a chain store in China -- #39 on the second floor at 228 Moling Lu)



It's no secret that the Shanghai train station (north) is where to go to get glasses. Although the underground market was shuttered last year, the hundreds of retailers erstwhile located therein fanned out into a few different malls in the area, and the deals are pretty much the same. The easiest glasses mall to find is the one located directly across from the front entrance of the north train station. It's across from the large courtyard -- if you were to come out its front entrance you would be facing that clock obelisk in the center of the courtyard. Go to the clock obelisk; walk directly away from the train station, cross a street (Moling Lu), and you're there. There's another one around the side of the station -- that's four floors of nothing but glasses -- and there's another one that shares a space with a make-up market. Anyways, suffice to say, if you get up to the railway station and walk around, you're going to come across a large amount of people selling nothing but glasses. Just look for the large signs on the sides of the malls that read "Optical".







If you're new to Shanghai, basically, buying glasses is one of the great bonuses of living in this city because you can pretty much get a pair of glasses in under an hour at about 1/10 of the price you would normally pay in the West. Most vendors deal in knock-offs of designer brands -- Gucci, Prada, BOSS, et. al -- but there's plenty of Asian brands as well. It's pretty simple: you pick you frames, decide how much "quality" you want in your lenses (usually three different thicknesses, and that's where the price could vary), and they'll do them up on the spot for you. It's a bargaining situation (depending on your frames and lenses, you shouldn't be paying more than 200rmb at most for one pair), and the more pairs you buy, the more they knock off the overall price. You don't need your prescription; they can do an eye test for you at the shop, but it helps if you have an old pair of glasses to give them so they can ballpark how blind you are.

Now, given the relative cheapness of glasses, you can also mix and match and pick up some customized sunglasses as well. The low cost of product opens you up into a whole new realm of DIY designer freedom. They've also got super cheap color contact lenses as well, so there's potential to go really crazy with this thing. Anyways, the majority of sunglasses frames at the mall we went to (that first one) are either Euro-trash club wear (men's), cheesy Asian millionaire (men's and women's), or Paris Hilton white-framed Jackie O's (women's). You have to scour for some unique and original looking ones, but they're there.



Choose your fames. Now you're ready to discuss the gradient of shading and color tint for your lenses. You can choose from black, pink, red, green, yellow, purple, whatever. And then you can get them to make them darker, which they do by dipping some kind of vat of liquid plastic. It's pretty neat. Then they dry them out, sand them down to fit to the frames, snap them in, and that's it. Scroll down to the bottom for a start-to-finish slide show thing showing the evolution of custom shades. I got two pairs of Wayfarer-eque / Buddy Hollies.

In the end, yeah, it's cheaper to buy sunglasses off the street or in a shop for 10rmb, but getting stuff CUSTOM, BABY -- clothes, shoes, jeans, suits, shades -- is 2010. And you get to throw around the word "bespoke" at cocktail parties. Super fresh.

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