First off, I live in a rural town. There's only one optical shop that handles high-end sunglasses and they only carry Ray-Ban and Oakley. The closest city with a Sunglass Hut or Macy's is an hour away. Persol is not a brand that people where I live are familiar with.

Secondly, these square Persol glasses simply do not fit straight out of the box unless you're extremely lucky. So if you order these glasses, be prepared to have them adjusted to fit, and don't be disappointed (or trade up to a much larger size) if they don't fit out of the box.

As for the glasses themselves, they're very nice quality. Fit and finish are superb. With the earpieces extended, there's no gap at all between the edges of the arrow. The lenses are clear and I honestly believe I can see better while wearing these than I can with just my naked eyes. The brown polarized lens doesn't interfere with the screen on my iPhone 4s, although, obviously, it does change the color of things I'm looking at.

These glasses peg the style meter. They look amazing with a suit and they're not too bad with a more casual dress, either. They won't completely replace my Wayfarers, though, because they just don't go with a t-shirt and jeans.

My first experience with Persol glasses was from a vintage pair of 2650s I found on eBay. I loved the look and quality of them but they didn't fit and nobody in town would adjust them. I became convinced they were either a women's size or a small men's size so I decided to order a pair that would fit my head, and I picked the 2803 in Havana with brown polarized lens over the 2747 because the lens height is slightly bigger. I compared all the measurements (from another website) to my Ray-Ban wayfarers and decided they should fit as well, if not better, than my Ray-Bans.

Much to my horror, the 2803 fit exactly the same as my 2650s--tight at the temples, with the earpieces bulging out at a sharp angle at the microflex joints. Even at 58 mm and 140 mm from temple to temple, the earpieces were bent so much it looked like I'd bought a pair of children's glasses and tried to force them onto my head.

I again visited the local optical shops, and again was told that these glasses could not be adjusted. If you look close at the earpieces, you'll see two silver stripes running up and down just behind the Persol arrow. Those are micro-flex joints, which let the earpieces wiggle in and out. When wearing the glasses, these joints let the earpieces bend to fit your head. The optical shops I visited all told me that these joints made adjusting the glasses impossible.

I found a video on YouTube that showed how optical shops adjust plastic glasses using a hotbox filled with glass beads, and I ended up adjusting my glasses myself by filling a shallow sauce bowl with hot (but not boiling) water from my espresso machine and submerging the glasses. I only submerged the area I wanted to adjust (left temple, right temple, bridge) and I gently applied pressure to the glasses, trying them on each time I put gentle pressure somewhere and noticing tiny improvements each time. In all, it took about 30 minutes, and I refilled the tray every few minutes and--I must reiterate--I applied very little force when bending the frames. I adjusted the temple angle slightly and also flattened the bridge at the nose. After 30 minutes of adjustments, these Persol 2803 glasses fit me perfectly.

Aside from confusing the optical shop workers, the great thing about the microflex is that, the way mine are fitted, they balance the weight of the glasses against the side of your head without applying undue pressure. In fact, my Persol 2803 fit snug with extremely little pressure on my nose. It's almost as if the earpieces do all the work of holding the glasses on and the nosepiece feels like it's barely touching my nose. When I move, the glasses don't slide and of all the glasses I own, they're the most secure.

These are easily the best looking glasses I've ever owned. Every woman who has seen them has complimented them. As I said earlier, Persol is simply not a brand that's available where I live, so these stand out.

Looks aside, the quality of these glasses absolutely blows me away. I can see so clearly and they fit so comfortably that I'm almost ashamed I didn't buy a pair years ago.