Community & Business
13 August, 2026
Fashion meets culture for a cause
USING a pair of glasses to encourage culture, art and technology in the classroom is a novel approach for Yungaburra State School primary teacher Tamzin Hogan.
A collector of Indigenous designer glasses for several years, she says their detail and colour are a fun way to trigger the imagination of children from prep age to Year 6.
Ms Hogan is a teacher of science and the arts and has created a learning unit based around her own eyewear fashion, which is supported in a partnership between Specsavers and the Fred Hollows Foundation.
“I start the unit off by showing my glasses and saying ‘have a look at these,’ and they see all of the lines on them, and then I show them some of the Tarrise and Sarrita King artworks, and the aerial landscapes that include the city and country,” Ms Hogan said.
“So what we get the kids to do is to hop onto Google Earth and we find a picture of the school or local places, and then they create their own aerial landscape.
“It’s a nice collaboration between indigenous art and innovation and technology.”
Tamzin has been collecting the glasses since 2023, and the first pair she owned were by the artist Helen Dale Samson.
“They were just these beautiful, bright rainbow-coloured glasses and they were just so different,” she said.
Ms Hogan had gone into Specsavers but didn’t know what she wanted.
“They were all very samey and black and if you’re lucky you could get a tortoise shell,” she said.
She remembered the woman who assisted her had suggested the designer collection, and that was it.
The Fred Hollows Foundation collaboration had also rung a bell, and Ms Hogan had investigated the background a little further to learn about the innovative work by the late Fred Hollows in treating trachoma in Indigenous communities and in developing countries.
With his wife Gabi, who he met in the 1970s, they had worked on the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program, which took them to over 465 Indigenous communities in outback Australia.
By the 1980s, and travelling through India and Africa, they also slashed the cost of eye care and treatment by producing affordable intraocular lenses used to treat cataracts and restore sight.
Despite being diagnosed with cancer in the early 90s, in the last few months of his life, Fred discharged himself from hospital to fly to Vietnam to train over 300 Vietnamese eye specialists in modern surgery techniques.
He and Gabi also set up The Fred Hollows Foundation to ensure their work continued. Fred died on 10 February 1993, but the Foundation still works in more than 25 countries and has restored sight to over three million people worldwide.
This background added “an extra layer in the joy of the glasses for me”, Ms Hogan said. It was also another speaking topic for the students, who learned a little more about Indigenous communities across the country.
Ms Hogan said the new edition of designer glasses, using artwork from Ernabella artist and Pitjantjatjara woman, Atipalku Intjalki, was exciting and beautiful in colour.
Specsavers aims to raise $500,000 through the sale of the limited-edition glasses, with $25 from every sale going directly to the foundation.
