Eyeballs Eyewear in Paddington is a Sydney stockist of Sabine Bé glasses and sunglasses, and we hold the sculptural acetate frames and the finer metal collection in store. Try them on at 342 Oxford Street, about ten minutes from the Sydney CBD, open seven days.
A French house built on colour
Sabine Bé started her house in France in 2010 with a stated intention to make eyewear that makes the wearer smile, and the collection delivers on it without ever tipping into novelty. That distinction is the whole thing: plenty of brands make a loud frame, and most of them make a costume. These are properly drawn.
The shapes are sculptural — asymmetric cat-eyes, exaggerated uplifts, deep butterflies, the occasional squared-off panto — but they are cut with real precision, and the proportions are controlled even when the outline is not. Pick one up and the edges are crisp, the rims are even, and the temples come off the hinge exactly where the drawing says they should.
Where the house genuinely stands apart is the colour work. Multi-layer laminated acetates, unexpected inner colours revealed only at the rim where the sheet is cut through, and combinations that should not work and do: a mustard over petrol, a raspberry over sand. Because the colour is laid up in the block rather than printed on, it goes all the way through — the frame is the same colour in three years as it is today, and a scratch does not reveal a different plastic underneath.
Acetate, metal, and the 'Be' names
Every model in the collection is named with the same conceit, which makes the range easy to talk about once you know it — Be Cat's, Be Bandit, Be Lucky, and the Be Crazy Line and Be Pop Line series. If you have seen a name written down and cannot remember the rest, tell us the shape and the colour and we will find it.
The metal collection is thinner and more restrained, and it is often the better entry point for someone who wants the house's colour sensibility on a smaller frame. The metals carry colour in the lacquer and in the acetate temple tips rather than in the front, so they sit quieter on the face while still being unmistakably from the same hand. Optical and sun are made across both sides of the range, and the sun shapes tend to be the deeper, more architectural ones.
What we hold in Paddington
We buy the collection for colour rather than for safety, so what is in the cabinet leans towards the pieces you cannot find elsewhere in Sydney:
- Sculptural acetate cat-eyes and butterflies
- The finer metal collection, optical and sun
- Multi-layer laminated colourways, including the darker inner-colour combinations
- Optical frames and sunglasses across both materials
- New season colours as they land, and the quieter shapes for people who want the colour without the outline
Every frame can be fitted with your prescription, sunglasses included, and lenses are edged in store. On a deep or an asymmetric front that is not a small thing — the lens shape carries the design, so a lens cut a millimetre generous or set on the wrong axis undoes the drawing.
Who Sabine Bé suits
These are among the most enjoyable frames in the shop to try on, and among the ones people photograph before they decide. They suit someone who has stopped trying to make glasses disappear — and, in our experience, quite a few people who arrived certain they wanted something invisible and changed their mind at the mirror.
Practically: the cat-eyes and butterflies want a bit of vertical depth, so if you have a short distance between brow and cheek, look at the metals or the shallower acetates first. A strong colour reads best against strong colouring or against very neutral colouring, and the multi-layer combinations do a lot of the work for anyone in between. If you wear a progressive lens, tell us before you fall for a shallow shape — some of the deeper fronts are actually easier to make work.
Come in and put five on. It is a range that has to be seen on a face, and we will adjust whichever one wins before you leave.
