In the world of eye fashion, the term “cool contacts’ refers to fantasy contact lenses and may be considered the counterpart of fantasy hairstyles in the realm of hairdressing. Although contact lenses were invented to correct eye defects as an alternative to ordinary eyeglasses, they soon evolved into fashion accessories for people without any eye defects and are used like lipstick, nail polish and makeup.

As fashion accessories, contact lenses were first used to change the color of a person’s eyes. Thus, a naturally blue-eyed person might have green eyes the next day or hazel eyes the day after. It did not take long before designs were added to contact lenses to bring them more in line with nail and hair fashion.

Some examples of cool contacts are:

• Black Out lenses give the eyes a completely black appearance and are inspired by the vampire look in the television series Twilight.
• Alien lenses have a green iris around the natural dark pupil giving the user eyes that look alien or like a snake’s.
• Stitches contacts have a design that makes the eyes look like they have been stitched.
• Computer chip contacts are a washout white color with a computer chip design surrounding the pupil for the look a computer geek would love.
• Hourglass contacts have a hazel background with a black hourglass shape over the pupil.
• Dollar Sign contacts have dollar signs on a green background.
• Icarus contacts have a flame design and are named after a Greek mythological character who flew too close to the sun.
• Dragon Eye contacts are hand painted and cover the entire eyeball with a design of dragon scales, a speckled dragon’s egg and a black cat’s eye pupil.
• Cyclops contacts cover the entire surface of the eye with a red shade. They have started to become very popular with the nightclub crowd.
• There are many more designs like creature contacts, flower contacts and a range that would do a tattoo parlor proud.

Another group of cool contacts are Halloween contacts. These are lenses with designs specially made for the Halloween festivities. In keeping with spirit of the festival, Halloween contacts are meant to make the user look really scary and stand out at a Halloween costume party. Some of the more common designs are zombie contacts, vampire contacts, werewolf contacts, Frankenstein contacts, Terminator contacts and Sauron’s Eye contacts.

As cool contacts go, Halloween contacts are about as cool as they can get.