Designer Glasses As A Statement

Glasses can make, and on occasion define, the man (or woman!). John Lennon was so attached to his round coloured Windsor style glasses that the style is now almost solely referred to the ‘Lennon’. Not only do the ‘Lennons’ show how much power a pair of glasses really can have when placed upon the nose of an icon, but it also says a lot about the media. The ‘Lennon’ could as well have been called the ‘Groucho Marx’, the ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ or even the ‘Joseph Stalin’, all of whom wore the same style but it was Lennon’s name that stuck.

The movie Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as Lt Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Kelly McGillis as Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood with adequate support from Val Kilmer as Lt Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, launched several careers and fuelled many an adolescent fantasy, arguably the real stars though were the aviator sunglasses that adorned the cast in most of the movie. Sales of this style soared in the wake of the film’s release as the F14 Tomcat jet fighters, which at the time were the zenith of US naval aviation. Aviator style shapes are also the preferred designer sunglasses of Cristiano Ronaldo and were the accessory of choice for the late king of pop, Michael Jackson.

Of course much of the reason anyone wears designer glasses is because of looking good and getting the image they want, but that doesn’t always mean looking cool. You only have to look as far as the two Ronnies with their horn rim specs which were all the logo their show really needed. Just as iconic as Lennon or Cruise, only their image projection purpose was to make the wearers look comfier and sillier than normal. Snooker player Dennis Taylor’s famous designer glasses had a distinctive, swivel-lens, upside-down design. They may have looked slightly odd, but they helped Taylor win the 1985 world snooker title. One strange celebrity glasses situation was that of comedian Eric Sykes who was never seen without his trademark black horn rim specs. In fact there was nothing wrong with Sykes’ eyesight, instead the ‘glasses’ were merely a bone-conducting hearing aid, and contained no glass at all.

Related posts:

1. Designer Glasses Are about Style and Substance
2. Describing Designer Glasses
3. Gucci Glasses Bring You a Fresh Up-to-the-minute Look
4. Great Panache and Taste With Prada Glasses
5. People Like Wearing Designer Sunglasses