Fair warning, this is a sad story. No, really, it’s tragic. As you all know I am a big fan of Julbo and I love their lenses. I was super stoked to get these awesome frameless pair of sunglasses from Julbo to try out. As I suspected, they are super cool looking and they flatter my face well. They wrap around nicely and have good full coverage for my peripheral vision; important for a delicate, sensitive-eyed flower like me. However, tragically, they didn’t fit my wee little head well. The ear loops were just too big. I know they can be adjusted utilizing a tiny screwdriver and good hand-eye coordination, and I might try that to see if it improves the situation. But in the name of getting them reviewed I just lent them to my Gearguy, who was skeptical of them to say the least. He was full of all sorts of criticism until he returned to the house after a long run, having experienced a change of heart and referring to the Motion as “the perfect running glasses.” So here I am, heartbroken that “the perfect running sunglasses” don’t fit my head. Bah! See? Tragic!

Gearguy reports that he had thought the nose bridge would be uncomfortable, because it’s pretty much pressing in on your face rather than down on the sides of your nose, but he found that he barely knew it was there once he started running. He said they didn’t move at all and he was completely comfortable the whole time. He’s a much faster runner than me so he probably ran about 8-10 miles in the short time he was gone (I can tell because Geardog, who went with him, is a tad bit tired) – a decent long run during which the sunglasses didn’t shift, bounce, or cause any pressure points. Well, hey! Now I’m even more motivated to figure out how to adjust the ear loops. It would be nicer if adjusting them wasn’t such a process.

The ear loops really are the problem here. For running, they are probably fine because runners usually have easy access to their ears. For my first love, mountain biking, they might not work well because it would be hard to get these on and off while wearing a helmet and bandanna, as I typically do. For winter sports they might be a good design because of the non-bulky ear loops that would fit well under a toque (remember, I am in Canada now!), but the lens isn’t dark enough to wear in snowy conditions. I see a lot of potential with this design and I wish it were mine so that I could tinker with it and re-release it.

Sadly, though, I don’t think you can buy these glasses anymore. I have yet to see them on the Julbo site or on any retail sites or in any stores. I don’t know what the deal is but I hope they become available soon, because they are pretty cool and I think they might really take off, given a few tiny design tweaks. I suppose it is my job to go call up Julbo and ask them what the story is, so if I get around to doing that, I’ll update this post for you.

When sunglass samples come in the door, there’s no question who gets to test them: it’s always me. I have unbelievably sensitive eyes and I wear sunglasses every single day no matter the weather. So let me tell you, I know sunglasses. I think I have every pair of sunglasses ever made, that’s how often I wear sunglasses. I think nothing of spending hundreds of dollars on a good pair of sunglasses to avoid having painful, swollen eyes later in the day. I also have tinted windows on my car so that I don’t have to wear sunglasses when driving, because in addition to sensitive eyes I have sensitive skin, and wearing glasses constantly can really cause skin irritation. Yeah, it’s awesome to be high-maintenance me. So you can take my opinion as, like, gospel on this one.

So let’s just say it. These are RAD. The moment I put them on I realized how sunglasses are supposed to fit. The MonteRosas are a true women’s specific frame, and cradle smaller faces like I cradle my precious coffee mug in the morning. Fitting squarely straight out of the box – a rarity, most sunglasses need some sort of adjustment even when brand new – the MonteRosa has a fitted, close fit to block out as much light as possible. The superdark lenses are a wonderful relief in bright sunlight and the snap-on side shields block even more light. Folks with normal eye sensitivity would have no problem using these for glacier glasses; even I’d be tempted to try it on cloudy days (but I’d probably regret it). I do, however, wear them for just about every hike I go on these days.

The Julbo samples don’t typically come with much information, so I’m just taking a guess here, but I think the lenses on mine are the class-4s, without the anti-fog feature. If I were to spring for these glasses I’d go with the anti-fog lenses, because any sunglass that fits close to the face and is meant to be used during athletics will undoubtedly fog up. I’ve had this issue a few times but it doesn’t diminish my love for the MonteRosas. Well done, Julbo; even my $450 Prada sunglasses (true, I even tried Prada sunglasses. Shameful, but true) don’t fit as well or block as much light. I’ll even go so far as to say that the MonteRosas are cuter, too, and there’s less chance of seeing the same sunglasses in some paparazzi shot of Britney Spears (which really did happen with those Pradas. Talk about blowing my gear cred).

Evidently these are not available for retail sales yet, but when they are, I’ll update this post with a link.

Sometimes my clients’ incessant (and much appreciated!) sample-sending backfires, and they send me something so fabulous that everything else in the shipment is cast off and forgotten. The Revolution goggles are one such item (sorry Julbo, I really really have been testing those other ones you sent, too. Honest). I just freaking LOVE these Revolution goggles. I’m obsessed with the Zebra lenses – you might remember them from the Julbo Trail sunglasses I reviewed last year – they are photochromatic and can go from Cat 2 to Cat 4 in a matter of seconds. They’re the best lenses EVER. They transition so seamlessly that you’ll never notice. I love the cool amber color of the lens at its darkest, the low profile of the frame, and the feather-light weight. They fit over my helmet and don’t even interfere with its fit. The strap has a fastener so you don’t have to awkwardly stretch it around your helmet; you just unhook the fastener and re-hook it around your helmet (or head, if you’re naughty and don’t wear a helmet). So handy!

I use these so much that it’s been difficult to get around to reviewing other goggles. I’ve set out to test other pairs, trying as hard as I can to leave the Revolutions behind, but I always end up stuffing them in my pack and using them instead of the test pair. And you know how much I hate carrying extra stuff – if I’m willing to tote two pairs of goggles around just so I can wear these, you know they’re good.

I’ll spare you any Top Gun jokes. But you can get the Miss sunglasses at backcountry.com for $89 by clicking here.

I have this thing for aviator sunglasses. I really don’t care whether they are suited to my face or not, I just think they are the coolest sunglasses ever. You can’t go wrong with a good pair of aviators. Naturally, I love the Julbo Miss sunglasses, a classic aviator with a bit of a modern twist. Or is it a retro twist, since the colors are kind of neon? Seriously, I love Julbo and think their glasses fit women’s faces really well and their lenses are among the best in the industry; but I really wish they’d stop with the neon. Neon was fun in its day, but its day is over and it’s not coming back, not if I can help it.

Other than that, though, the Miss sunglasses are great. They have a nice curved shape to fit close to the face and block out as much indirect light as possible. They are snug and shaped for a woman’s face, so they’re smaller than regular sunglasses. The lenses are nice and dark and protect even the most sensitive of eyes (which I know, ‘cuz I’ve got ‘em). The lenses are Cat 3, which aren’t the darkest possible, but they are still good enough for everything but extended exposure to snow and glacier travel. However, most Julbo glasses allow you to have your choice of lens when you buy them, so you’ll probably be able to customize them to be just exactly the way you like them. They’re more of a fashion-oriented item rather than sport, but hey, everyone needs sunglasses for doing stuff in-between sports, right? And even though they’re kind of neon, they do come in pink, so of course I like them. Though I must admit that what with the pink hat, pink sunglasses, pink bike, pink helmet, and pink shirt, I might be overdoing it just a wee bit.

Holy bug eyes, Batman! I would love wearing these Cat 4 glacier glasses for the “beetle look” alone. The lenses are pretty round and shiny, no doubt about it. They’re not totally dorky, but they will definitely remind you either of insects (but cute ones) or World War I flying aces (with Cat 4 lenses in their goggles). But for this Geargal, whose eyes are so sensitive that she meets Alaska’s three months of winter darkness with a sense of relief, these are just the ticket. I’m one of those people who wears Cat 4 lenses even in the winter months, because I just can’t stand bright light. I even went through a bunch of trouble and expense to get a permit to tint all my car windows limo-dark. It was so worth it, I never get achy, dry eyes anymore, and I don’t get chafed by the sunglasses I was having to wear in all daylight hours. And no one can see in, so I can do WHATEVER I WANT in my car and no one can see me. This comes in handy when making rude gestures at people. But then when I’m in a normal car, I forget that people can see me, so I get busted all of the time making faces and staring at people. Anyway. Sunglasses. So it was getting hard to get me out of my car. I would lock all the doors and howl “but it’s BRIGHT out there!” Luckily for me the Explorers came along and I could join society again. Sorry, society.

The Cat 4 lenses mean they are dark, dark, dark, and the plastic guards on the sides block out almost all of the reflected light. This means I can spend a sunny day on the glacier without being incapacitated by glare by the end of the day. Regular sunglasses let in too much light from the sides and underneath, but the Explorers are designed to block most of that out while not interfering with your peripheral vision. Putting these on when it’s bright out is an amazing relief.

Julbo warned me that these aren’t really made for smaller faces, and that’s somewhat true – they fit my face just fine but the arms (is that what they’re called? You know, the things that go over your ears. Yeah, the arms go over your ears. You know what I mean) are too long and I have to tighten the lanyard to really get the glasses to sit correctly on my face. This just means that Julbo should make these in a smaller size as well, because women need glacier glasses too!

The Explorers do have a tendency to fog when I’m running or skiing, but maybe that’s because of my tendency to breathe with my lower lip jutted out when I’m running or skiing. Quite a mystery, that. If I’m not wearing a hat I don’t have the problem with the fogging, but my point is that while the Explorers sit pretty close into your face, they don’t seal to your face like goggles so you can still fog them up. But they are definitely usable as goggles, for the most part.

My one big beef with these is that my pair is black with neon green accents on the sides (the pair above has black where the neon green is on mine). Hello, what is this, 1991? It is not necessary to bring neon back. I really don’t understand the need for the neon. They’d be way cooler if they were just black. But since these save me an immense amount of eye irritation and allow me to go have fun in the outdoors without resorting to wearing ski goggles for everything, I can put up with a little neon.

Available at backcountry.com! Click here.

I thought it reasonable to follow a mountain bike review with a mountain biking accessory review. Technically the Trail sunglasses are an accessory, but they’ve become one of my favorite things about biking this season. Truly a breakthough in sunglass technology (like I’m a world class evaluator of sunglass technology, I’m so sure), these frames are light and they STAY PUT. This might have something to do with the complicated arrangement of bandannas, ponytails, helmet straps, and sunglass positioning that I have down to a science, but even when I wear the Trails for other pursuits such as running, they grip like geckos and don’t slide, shift, or create pressure points. I used geckos for that simile because geckos are light and small, but also a little edgy (because, after all, they are reptiles), just like the Trail sunglasses. The Trails don’t leave the dreaded nose marks that other types of frames leave. I’ve gotten sweat burns -lovely, eh? – from other sunglasses because of the way they dig into the bridge of my nose, but the Trails have yet to mar my countenance with such unsightly marks.

So the frames themselves are great because of comfort and fit, but the extra genius of the Trails is their photochromatic lenses that darken and lighten according to the type of light you’re in. Remember that kid in your sixth grade glass who had photochromatic lenses that were sunglasses while he was outside but supposed to be regular glasses inside, but they never quite got all the way clear in the classroom so he always looked like he wore slightly tinted sunglasses? Well, photochromatic technology has come a long way these days (again, me = expert). The Trails start with kind of a yellow tint, but darken to amber in the direct sunlight. The lenses adjust so well that I never notice the change – all I notice is that there is no glare and that I feel like I’m not even wearing sunglasses. And that’s no exaggeration – the first few times I wore the Trails, I forgot I had them on and tried to take my helmet off at the end of the ride, only to get it hopelessly tangled in the aforementioned complicated bandanna-sunglass-helmet strap arrangement. Nothing looks cooler than struggling to get your helmet off because your sunglasses are holding it in place, let me tell you.

What’s even better is that at their darkest, the Trails still allow the wearer to see true colors. Everything looks normal, just with zero glare. I have the most sensitive eyes in the world (the WORLD!), complete with swelling and burning if I get too much sun, and so far the Trails have never let me down.

One caveat – these are not exactly high fashion frames for anything but biking. They are designed to fit when one is wearing a helmet, so they don’t look exactly right if you don’t have a helmet on. I wear them for hiking and running, too, but wearing them with a baseball cap seems a little off, because they push the baseball cap up too high on my forehead. Baseball caps come down lower on the forehead than helmets, so it makes sense, but it’s sad because I’d love to have these lenses in frames that fit with my favorite baseball cap as well as they fit with my helmet.

The lenses are also “soft” and flexible – just how flexible, I’m not sure, because it felt so unnatural to bend my sunglass lenses that I stopped messing with them in case they might break. I’m pretty sure they can still break, but they seem pretty tough. I think the flexibility of the lenses is also to reduce the carnage in a crash, however I think that firm plastic can still cut you pretty effectively in a high-velocity impact, so don’t expect the Trails to perform miracles on that count. Pretty much everything else about them is a miracle, so if you’re a biker and you don’t have these, what are you waiting for?

$134.90 at backcountry.com! Click here!