Mike Hale: Reading the tea leaves

This week’s issue of Optician includes a report on Selin Olmsted’s presentation at the Opti trade show on eyewear trends for 2026. Futurology is necessarily a complicated business to get right even some of the time, but eyewear design expert Olmsted is remarkably well placed, in terms of her experience and skills, to credibly synthesise macro-level societal and fashion trends into granular details specific to eyewear.  

I certainly found attending the talk inspiring and strolled out into the trade show with a renewed vigour to spot some trends of my own, albeit current ones, across the optical industry. In fact, it reminded me how, a few years ago, I read Jon Ronson’s popular non-fiction book The Psychopath Test, which describes the author’s exploration of psychopathy, and felt fleetingly empowered to judge people’s psychopathic tendencies.