Bella Hadid Tricked Me Into Buying Orange Sunglasses

I first laid eyes on Bella Hadid’s orange sunglasses while clicking through an Elle.com slideshow of Milan Fashion Week street style. I paused on the photo in question and felt the glands in my armpits start to sizzle, the arteries in my heart start to thump with extra blood. Nothing — and I mean nothing — gets me more excited than when I realize I am being influenced by an influencer. It’s so much fun.

But also, I feel like I see the same stuff over and over again on the internet, so it’s refreshing when something new appears on my radar and perks up my need-to-purchase antennae.

I was immediately drawn to the sunglasses silhouette, which I felt offered a new and different alternative to the cat-eye heard ‘round the world per Adam Selman x Le Specs. Ever since that craze blew up and refused to fade (so far), I’ve been searching for sunglasses that marched to the beat of a slightly different drum.

Part of that stems from my job as Man Repeller’s Fashion Editor because I am constantly conducting market research for shoots and stories. In addition to attending press appointments and being eyeballs-deep in the “new in” sections of Net-a-Porter, Topshop, Matches Fashion, Shopbop, etc. every week, I also scour the “discover” page of Instagram for things I haven’t seen before. It’s kind of like being on a safari, if you replaced the animals with clothes and the binoculars with a phone screen.

After my orange sunglasses-induced freak-out, I embarked on a Jeep ride through the interwebs to try and unearth their evolutionary origins. The answer came via the website Hadid’s Closet, which, in case it wasn’t clear from the name, is a blog dedicated to the respective wardrobes of Bella and Gigi Hadid.

After going back a few pages, I found the sunglasses. Bella was photographed wearing them in a different outfit while exiting a hotel in London on September 19th. True to the website’s mission statement, outfit credits were provided, and I learned that the sunglasses were from none other than Australian designer Poppy Lissiman. EUREKA.

They’re $125, which isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot less expensive than all the deodorant I’d have to buy if I just let my armpit glands sweat the craving out.

Has something like this ever happened to you? A moment of reckoning in which you are confronted with an item so spine-tingling you drop everything to chase it down like a freaking gazelle? It’s a rare and wonderful impulse and, frankly, gives me an adrenaline rush akin to the first taste of a really delicious new food. Tell me about your chases in the comments section. Fair warning, though: I will probably copy you.