The Best Sunglasses of 2017
Fear not these fashion-forward frames. The best sporty-shades makers are showing new style.
Rudy Project Momentum
Best For: Making the Scene
Rudy gets all King Midas (mirrored gold lenses, gold-dusty frames) with this louche design. If you can handle it, you’ll revel in the view through lenses with great clarity and pop—amazing, considering they’re not polarized, which can make things look blah. The features aren’t about actually playing: comfort, coverage, and security are abundant.
Price $175
Bollé Highwood
Best For: Days on the Water
These shades seem almost sharklike, with gill-slit vents at the hinges. Deeply tinted gray lenses with blue mirroring tamp out glare, and an oil-shedding coating means that sunscreen wipes right off. We also dig the attachable foam leash, which cinches the frame nice and tight to your noggin, so you can paddle, windsurf, and sail with gusto.
Price $130
Kaenon Burnet XL
Best For: Stifling Sunshine
Kaenon’s posh, big-guy glasses say “money” without being obnoxious. But you’ll know you bought up, beholding the world through amazingly fine lenses in gray polarization that’s dark enough for blazing sun on sand, water, or snow. Large, flat temples give wide coverage, and sticky rubber nose pads keep the Burnets where you want them.
Price $239
Raen Remmy 52
Best For: That Perfect Fit
You’ve seen the silhouette before—librarian-round lenses, keyhole-shaped gap at the nose—but never so slender and classy. Clear frames, kissed with champagne color, reveal stainless wire at the core of each thin temple, which bends into whatever shape you need it to for a permanent fit. Gray-green-tinted polarized lenses score high on optics.
Price $170
Smith Guide’s Choice
Best For: Killer Coverage
This artful number has serious sport bona fides. Optics are razor-edged through glare-killing polarized lenses. The warm copper tint pumps up depth and contrast, while colors throb. Soft rubber cladding, along with large lenses that wrap back for peripheral coverage, make for serious security. Even with all that, the Guide’s Choice is surprisingly light.
Price $229
Sunski Seacliffs
Best For: Tooling Around Town
With frosty white frames and blue temples, the coolness is almost literal, like these glasses came right out of the freezer. It’s rare to find such stylish shades south of 60 bucks. But quality-wise, the Seacliffs stand up to models in the $100 range, with polarized and mirrored lenses. Still, this one isn’t crafted for hard charging—stick to the street and light recreation.
Price $55
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