Bling! Retired Pol Eyes 2nd Career

Sir Elton John, take note: You’ve got glasses competition.

On Saturday, friends and family of Brenda Foskey-Hill, who served as a Newhallville alder in New Haven until retiring at the beginning of 2018 and moving across the town line, gathered for the launch of Hamden’s newest glasses line: BDH Designer Eyewear.

Foskey-Hill makes every pair herself. Each one has a name, and each one is different.

“If you look, you can see that every single one is designed differently,” said Katerina Robinson, Foskey-Hill’s nail technician.

But they all have one thing in common. ​“If it’s not bling, she’s not using it,” Robinson said.

Foskey-Hill said some of her friends have told her the glasses look like something Elton John would wear. 

Foskey-Hill retired from Equitable Life Insurance about 17 years ago, she said. She also worked at Department of Labor.

Her eyewear-design days started with a visit to Dr. Joel’s Family Eye Care Center in Amity. She was there to buy a new pair of prescription glasses.

“I was retired, and I found it hard to buy the type of glasses I was accustomed to,” she said. So she bought the ugliest pair she could find and took the decorations into her own hands. She said the person helping her tried to convince her not to get the ugly pair she had her eye on, but she insisted.

She took them home and got to work gluing clear Swarovski Crystals on every millimeter until she had transformed the glasses into shimmering halos around her eyes.

She then wore those glasses to her friend Margaret Erkard’s house, and BDH Designer Eyewear was born.

“She wore a pair of glasses to my house, and I flipped over them,” recalled Erkard, who is now BDH’s business manager. ​“I said: ​‘Brenda, you need to get a patent for those.’ And the rest is history.”

Robinson helped Foskey-Hill in the beginning with her technique. She said she saw crystals falling off of the original pair so she showed Foskey-Hill how to attach them better, and ​“how to perfect” her glasses.

Robinson was there on Saturday to support Foskey-Hill. She also modeled the pair she bought.

The ​“BDH” stands for Brenda and Dan Hill. Dan Hill, Foskey-Hill’s husband, is the company’s vice president. Foskey-Hill’s granddaughters, Tanasia and Special Foskey, have helped get the company up and running. They make the BDH shirts that they modeled on Saturday. Felicia Hill, Foskey-Hill’s step daughter, designed the website.

“Looking For Mario”

Foskey-Hill sat on a yellow couch in her basement where she makes the glasses and demonstrated how she attaches decorations to frames.

In order to place glue exactly where she wants it, she fills a syringe and puts a fine tube on the end to get just a drop. She then picks up a crystal or stone with a sticky-tipped pen-like tool, and places it in the exact spot she wants it. If there’s extra glue, she trims it away with a pair of tweezers.

She said she gets most of her glasses from a private distributor — who, she would not say. Sometimes, if she’s at TJ Maxx and she sees a pair she wants to decorate, she said, she’ll snap it up.

Family and friends often inspire names. One pair (pictured) she made for Mother’s Day and named it Marjorie, after her mother (and daughter).

Another is named Ashley, for another daughter. There’s also Ivan 1 and Ivan 2 for her son, as well as a line of Dans for her husband.

Then there are others that aren’t named for anyone in particular, but rather give a name to what the glasses evoke. One white rim with blue crystals is called ​“Heaven.”

A green-rimmed pair with black crystals is named ​“money.”

Another, Foskey-Hill named ​“Big Gurl.”

Prices for now range from $20 to $40, depending on the cost of the material (Swarovski crystals jack up the price). But those are just the June prices. Come July, she said, they will increase.

Foskey-Hill said she generally works in the evening because ​“I haven’t done anything all day.” Mondays she does not work. Sometimes she works Tuesdays, sometimes she doesn’t. Come Wednesday, she said, the motivation has usually set in.

“If a flood comes in, I’ve got to be prepared for that, so I work,” she said. ​“It’s a tedious job, but it relaxes you. It’s therapy to me. I love it; this is my passion.”

She said she averages 12 – 13 pairs a week, though she said she has made as many as seven in one day. Sometimes, said her granddaughter Special, she stays up until midnight or 1 a.m. working.

BDH Designer Eyewear takes individual orders and if need be, ships them. Foskey-Hill said she has also sold pairs at a bar in Norwich, Connecticut, and in South Carolina, where Special goes to college.

The next step, said Erkard, is getting the name out there and marketing the brand. She said the target audience is ​“everyone.” She said that she and Foskey-Hill have considered making a whole line for men. Though neither Dan Hill nor Barry Sclar, the other man at the launch on Saturday, wore pairs, ​“there are a lot of men that are into bling,” she said.

But there’s one man in particular that Foskey-Hill would like to sell a pair too.

“You know what I’m looking for? I’m looking for Mario,” she said, referring to style-setting WTNH Reporter Mario Boone. ​“I just want him to buy glasses. I don’t need a story.”