Harold Lloyd was the first movie star to incorporate eyewear in an iconic persona. Babe Ruth was the most famous athlete in history. In 1928 both starred in a movie called “Speedy”. The film has some of the earliest location footage ever shot in New York City.
Purportedly it’s Claude Rains. All sources say he starred as The Invisible Man in the 1933 film. Could have been anyone, though. Think about it. Rains could have just looped his voice. The cool sunglasses were sort of the star of the movie anyway. Since the week’s over why not let your imagination have its […]
In fashion design it’s usually the apparel designers who are colorful. It’s a selling point. I suspect some people trust an object or article of clothing more if the creator is theatrically artistic or off-center. Usually eyewear designers are dismissed as quotidian types. But ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Udo Proksch: […]
Vincent Price as a comic book character sporting Richardson style sunglasses. The first sunglasses I ever especially noticed in a film were those worn by Vincent Price in Tomb of Ligeia. It was the last in Roger Corman’s series of Poe adaptations. I thought Price was wearing the coolest looking outfit I’d ever seen. It […]
I guess everybody in the U.S. begins their July 4th holiday tomorrow. Nowadays people in the United States eat barbecue, detonate small explosives and watch professionals detonate larger explosives by way of celebration. Things were more patriotic in 1976 when we had the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence. You can tell by all the […]
I was thinking today: who was the first woman in eyewear I can remember that struck me as deeply sexy? I almost immediately recalled a Playboy Playmate from the 1960s, smiling, bookish looking, hair piled atop her head, white negligee forming a filmy canopy over the body of a fertility goddess. It was a study […]
Last post I noted that Luxottica had guarded themselves pretty well from their licensors going in-house for eyewear. In recent years they’ve avoided licensing from the luxury goods conglomerates, which were always the most likely to go in-house. Truth is, though, Luxottica is still vulnerable. Maybe not as much as Safilo, but vulnerable.
On September 2nd 2014 Kering, owners of The Gucci Group, announced they’d no longer license their brands for eyewear. These include Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Puma, Stella McCartney, Bottega Veneta, and Volcom. Instead they’d start an eyewear division and handle it in-house by late 2016. For years I’ve been wondering why such […]
Fashion cycles went quickly and differed radically from year to year during the 1960s. I’ll admit I have a fondness for much of the design of the era. I still marvel at pictures of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing New York. I’ve always liked Modernism with Jetsons overtones.
