Eclipse glasses are the only way to safely look directly at a solar eclipse. If you take only one thing away from the hype leading up to April 8's much-anticipated total eclipse, let that be it.
But even then, be sure you're wearing eclipse glasses with lenses that actually, y'know, prevent the eclipse from permanently harming your peepers. Regular sunnies won't cut it.
That's step one. Step two is making sure your eclipse shades are suitably fresh. Because, surprisingly, it turns out that eclipse shades are sometimes sorta drippy.
And who better than Bill Nye to demonstrate?
Nye's modeling turn embodies a classic trope: put a famous near-septuagenarian in fancy fashions and watch the internet react. Hey, worked for MSCHF.
There are two slight upsides here. And, I must admit, they're not the clothes.
Instead, Nye's cover shoot provides actual eclipse info, a welcome respite from the amusingly dumb conspiracy theories currently unavoidable on TikTok (do not ever believe anything heard on TikTok).
And, then, Nye's little fashion moment also showcased a few pairs impressively slick eclipse glasses.
They ain't Balenciaga: they're UV blockers.
Until today, I had no idea that anyone was actually making eclipse glasses that hit anywhere close to the cyberpunk vibes you'd expect of shades designed for viewing a solar eclipse. And I must admit that, even at their best, none of the eclipse glasses I found looked quite as cool as the Matrix-y shapes I imagined.
But, like the truth itself, some surprisingly slick solar eclipse shades are indeed out there.
Most of the eclipse glasses sold online are of the ordinary disposable paper variety. Ideal for the eyes, not so much the planet.
As a glasses-wearer, I was pretty impressed by these pleasantly silver-tinged eclipse clip-ons, which give your ordinary frames a little bit of that Balenciaga swag afforded to Nye's higher-end solar eclipse sunnies.
But the real winners are these $25 wraparound glasses that look a little like something Walter Van Beirendock might've designed for Linda Farrow.
I doubt that these things are actually all that luxurious but they do look straight outta Hackers, in a good way.
Tall praise for something designed to be function-first. By why should they be function only?
