Stylish sunglasses can look cool, but what happens when you need performance, too? Not all shades are great for adventure, as they can lack polarized lenses and sturdiness to accompany you through land and water excursions. But even when women find those badass sunglasses, they’re often styled for dudes and can have too large a frame to look good on smaller faces.
Enter the Costa Waterwoman Sunglasses—my standard shades for this summer.
Between sailing, kayaking, and paddleboarding, I’m on the water a lot. And polarized sunglasses are what I need to keep my eyes protected. But I also use these on the trail—whether I’m hiking or biking.
The medium frame is relatively narrow fitting, has angled temples, and is made with bio-resin (from castor oil). Use of bio-based resin vs. petroleum-based resin results a reduction in emissions and overall carbon footprint. The internal arms are textured and angled so that the sunglasses fit snugly without causing a headache. They fit me so well that I don’t have to add a retainer to keep them from flying off when I’m active on the water, but there are a couple ways to add one if you need to.
I like that these sunglasses aren’t so precious that I worry about them breaking, but they look good, too. Don’t you dare take mine from me. Get your own.
Waterwoman sunglasses have a variety of choices when it comes to frame and lens colors. For frame, choose between shiny wahoo (brown tortoise-like on top and blue on bottom), shiny blonde crystal, matte shadow tortoise, shiny palm tortoise. For lenses, choose between sunrise silver mirror, copper silver mirror, gray silver mirror, gray, green mirror, and blue mirror. Lenses are either polarized plastic or polarized glass. (Mine are shiny wahoo with blue mirror.) Depending on your choices, the resulting sunglasses list from $189 to $269 on the Costa site.