Los Angeles

The glamour of glasses is inextricably linked to the men who made them iconic -- but sadly, most people can't conjure up the image of anyone but a Risky Tom Cruise, or that guy who plays poker on TV. Expand your eyeballs' horizons with Allyn Scura.

AS offers over 50,000 vintage frames for prescription and sun- glasses, with styles hailing from the 1980s all the way back to the 1800s -- when corrective lenses weren't yet widely available, and the nearsighted were often locked up in mental institutions. To showcase their wares, they've created a gallery of bespectacled greats: Malcolm X's mixed acrylic and wire affairs; Michael Caine's stylish-nerd horn rims; Peter Fonda's contoured, golden easy-riders; Marcello Mastroianni's thick-legged new wavers; and Teddy Roosevelt's wire-frame roundies, as narrow as his torso was not. Best of all, none of the frames have ever been worn -- so you can be sure your Gandhi-style specs were never nibbled on during a hunger strike.

AS only stocks a small selection of their specs online, selling the rest at fashion fairs and swap meets all over Southern California -- a nomadic business plan inspired by Peter O'Toole, in his role as Lawrence of Raybania.