I really love this shop. It's a complete hidden gem! I've been "visually challenged" since the age…read moreof eight. So I've literally been wearing some sort of corrective lens (glasses and contacts) for 35 years. The most difficult part for me was ALWAYS finding frames that fit me - my must have #1. That means I need nose pads. Then, I look at style - sad, right? So I wore contact lens FOREVER... I loathed whenever I had to go get new glasses. Well, not since a few years now. We come to this shop ALL the time. My AWESOME Poloroid polarized sunglasses are from here (with custom nose pads).
Now that wearing glasses is back in style, YAY!! I thought there would be more selection now. NOPE, I was wrong. The trendy glasses now are large and round and I can't wear that style at all (I cannot wear most plastic frames w/o custom nose pads installed - which can be done at Monterey Park Optical! I bought my Tom Ford frames at a crazy low price at Costco and brought them to Mr. Ling (the optometrist - he's licensed in Taiwan, but since he opened this store, he only "fills eye glass prescriptions" - but he sees everything an optometrist does. He even double checks my family's prescriptions before he "fills" it, our whole family comes here and I refer people here whenever I can, since they are the best I've found so far. I'm almost positive that a prescription "re-check" is NOT a service he offers to other people (since he only has a Taiwanese License to practice Optometry). Mr. Ling and his wife Janet, yes, this is a "mom and pop" boutique eyewear shop. They have frames to fit all budgets.
Never before have I found a pair of glasses that I liked and could stand up to my vigorous usage. I have seizure disorder, so I've ruined many pairs of glasses by falling over and breaking them (which is what happened to my Tom Ford light brown frames you see me wearing in some photos). I used my glasses all day, every day from when I wake up to when I go to sleep.
Mr. Ling, the owner, himself wears an amazing looking Teal colored pair of glasses. I HAD to know what the brand was. His wife Janet also had amazing looking glasses.
I realized fairly quickly that this store was a boutique store. Mr. Ling was wearing Silhouette Eyewear from Austria. His wife Janet was wearing an amazing pair of rose gold/pink glasses that are from Japan.
And NO, they DO NOT carry COACH - Thank God... I can't stand Coach. And neither can they! Why? Because they don't think that the quality of Coach frames are good enough for what Coach wants to charge. I realized that Mr. Ling and his wife Janet scour the WORLD for eye wear.
I ended up getting a pair of Silhouette's as well. I looked up their website: www.silhouette.com/us/en/home/ and found out that they have designer collections. Nope, I can't afford the $20,000 (yes, $20k for glasses!) 18kt solid gold pairs with 72 VS1 diamonds (last collection. Current collection is round colorful and plastic frames - no clue on price) and Monterey Park Optical said the glasses were beautiful, but each pair was $20k. Crazy! They have the 23kt thick gold plated frames there w/Schwarovki crystals for about $1000. Bling is not my style, and I had zero probs finding glasses here.
Monterey Park Optical has all the brands you would want, Gucci, Burberry, Prada, etc. But their specialty is finding companies from all over the world that make only eye wear. When I saw Janet's glases, I asked her if the Japanese frames came with springs on the hinges. She literally took off her pair of glasses and pulled it into a straight line. So each link (that I thought was a fashion thing) was a spring.
My Tom Ford glasses broke because of a recent seizure and the frames cracked when the side of my head hit the floor. The lenses were still good but had a scratch in the coating (they were expensive transitions lenses that had every kind of coating that you could buy). I literally only had to buy the frames and Mr. Ling installed the frames for me. He noticed the scratch and pointed it out to me, letting me know that once the coating is scratched there's no way to fix it. My mom tried to save money by doing the same thing that I did - just replace the frame, but her lenses were too scratched up. However, that didn't stop Mr. Ling from doing it for my mom anyway, even though the lenses needed replacing (in my opinion, Mr. Ling said, "if it's too scratched, bring it back". So about two days after my mom got her glasses back with the scratched lenses, she ended up going in and ordering new lenses. Mr. Ling and Janet know us well, all my family comes here and all my mom's friends. We love them!
I have found my eyeglass heaven. I don't need to go anywhere else from now on! I literally don't want to go anywhere else. I can't find a better shop, nor better educated owners who care about the quality of glasses and their customer and not flashy names. Trust me, flashy name brands are generally cheaper than QUALITY. I love my Austrian glasses!!
