Glasses can make, and on occasion define, the man (or woman!). John Lennon was instantly recognisable thanks to his round lens coloured Windsor style that are now much more commonly referred to as a “Lennon”. Apart from demonstrating the power of designer glasses in terms of style, that also illustrates the importance of the other component of contemporary celebrity – the modern media. Lennon glasses could just as easily been called after Groucho Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, or Joseph Stalin, – they all wore the same style.
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.
Obviously the main purpose of designer glasses for most people is image, but that image doesn’t always mean looking as cool as possible. 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. Those glasses helped Taylor win the world snooker title, even if they did look a bit strange. 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.
