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Shades of difference
Experienced a pair of original Ray ban sunglasses Drifters ? You would remember if you have. They are the size welding goggles, which has a shelf straight upper edge and side pieces like automatic parking barriers. You could easily utilize them as an escape raft if stranded over a desert island, that's perhaps the location where the name originates. In the middle of the Twentieth century, they were the epitome of travel cool.
Staring at them of their cabinet in the British Optical Association Museum, near the Strand in London, I felt quite emotional. We were holding the crusty forebears of my first set of two shades, Ray ban sunglasses Wayfarers (circa 1988), which somehow managed by 50 percent ounces of glass and shatterproof plastic to convey sun, sand as well as the certainty of having a boyfriend. Since that particular pair fell in the side with a sunset booze cruise and spiralled gently on the bottom from the Indian Ocean, sunglasses for me have never packed quite this kind of punch.
For most of us, however, they may be a fashion accessory laden with potent symbolism. Their very names Drifters, Aviators, Sprees, Via Venetos, Celebrities, Swingers suggest the exotic, the leisurely and the loaded. Fortunately they are synonymous with holidays. The view of them gives mind sun and beaches and cafes, Audrey (Hepburn), Jack (Nicholson) as well as the (French) Riviera or even the (Swiss) Alps. Their glamour quotient lingers from the days when a smattering of us could afford to search. They are the absolute antithesis of labor.
Furthermore, sunglasses have a very strange power to separate the wearer in the world something that, in many cultures, could be perceived as rude in the developed Western world is cool. It's a word that implies a particular degree of remoteness, which some travellers will discover convenient. "When you apply to sunglasses, you shut yourself removed from the realities of the items you are confronting," said Pamela Church Gibson, senior lecturer in film and cultural studies at the London College of Fashion. "In movies, such as The Matrix, it is other worlds. For travellers, it's Bangkok traffic or poverty in India."
It's got not always been so. In the early days of protective eyewear, it had been snow glare (instead of reality) that was magically filtered out. A number of the earliest examples were invented by the tribes from the far north, calling in your thoughts comic possibilities. Perhaps, when their husbands returned home from hunting wearing shades made from reindeer bone or walrus tusk tied up with hide strips, Inuit women explored from the evening's blubber preparation and thought: Wow! He looks cool.
From those pioneering days until the leisure loving, materialistic 20th century, dark glasses remained purely functional. The Roman emperor Nero has been said to have watched chariots thundering across the Colosseum through emerald glass, plus the 17th century Qing dynasty courtiers wore dark glasses beyond courtesy when visiting their emperor, who was simply meant to be the personification from the sun.
"What we'd call sunglasses only arrived during the Eighteenth century," explained Neil Handley, curator with the British Optical Association Museum. "Here's one example from Venice," he explained pointing with a pair of round, pale blue lenses with horn rims "which were needed because of the harsh light around the lagoon." Given it lacks side pieces (which hadn't yet come to exist), Handley dates this pair for the second half from the century, when folks couldn't walk around inside their sunglasses.
There's rather marvellous about the thought of a Venetian strolling next to the sparkling lagoon greater than 200 years ago, wearing these very specs. You can view the marks about the horn where it turned out hand carved. Others in the collection have homemade pads underneath the bridge, to avoid sweat steaming up the lenses; a couple of Ray Ban sunglasses outlet tiny blue tinted discs from Britain, with velvet temple pads, was probably a stress reliever.
Dark glasses usually have mutated with the demands of life and travel. The 1800s "D" model (which looked like mirror image Ds) was referred to as "railway spectacle" because passengers conveyed in open rail carriages were martyrs to smuts and sparks in addition to glare. Cycling glasses appeared around 1910, then motoring goggles. All of them used tinted glass, often in cobalt blues and sea greens, later in soft pinks, yellows and greys; black glass was rare before the 1950s and ahead of that was the province with the blind.
"Until the first 20th century it could have been considered that you needed dark glasses for medical purposes," said Handley. "Then, as people started going abroad they found they needed sunglasses. I wouldn't be surprised if your Army issued them."
Actually, this didn't or not before the Second World War, when clip on dark glasses were first mentioned on uniform lists. My uncle, who was simply in India through the 1930s, said he never saw anyone wearing them; instead the Army insisted on "cork covered helmet whites". That isn't to say that sunglasses weren't around. In 1929, the initial dark glasses for leisure purposes a couple of Foster Grants were sold at Woolworths for the Atlantic City Boardwalk; and my mother remembers English women in white framed "glare glasses" within the 1930s.
By 1937, Ray ban sunglasses produced the 1st Aviators, using green anti glare glass. Shiny things cost $4 a pair 15 times more than the competition.
From this level on, dark glasses begun to creep in to the public consciousness like a fashion item. "The first mention I have found is in Nancy Mitford's Love within a Cold Climate of 1949," said Pamela Church Gibson, "when cheap Ray Ban Wayfarer Cedric Hampton wears what he is the term for as my goggles' from Van Cleef Arpels. People started to wear them on the Riviera in the 1950s, nonetheless they didn't really go to Britain until they started appearing from the movies".
Now we are on firm ground: Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953 banned in Britain, so doubly attractive); Audrey Hepburn in Love within the Afternoon (1957 ) and, of course, in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961 ); Marcello Mastroianni wearing his, night and day, in La Dolce Vita. All foreign. All glamorous. All exactly where and what we seriously considered.
For the next three decades, sunglasses were essential for looking good once you travelled. And, in accordance with Alan Niblo, commercial manager for Luxottica (which owns Ray Ban and manufactures luxury brands such as Chanel, Prada and Versace), the crossover from go to pure fashion began only within the mid 1990s. "Before that, the premium market [50 or more a pair] was tiny," he said. "People bought sunglasses for holidays and sun protection. Now the premium information mill one million units a year."
Fashion aside, should we really need sunglasses? As pale, northern island dwellers, we know the sun we crave on holiday can harm the skin but could it customize the eyes at the same time? "UV radiation in sunlight can harm the lens from the eye and the cornea, which can be extremely painful," said Henri Obstfeld, director of the optical appliance testing service at City University, London. "And, together with the disappearance of the ozone layer, how much UV radiation might be more than one thinks from time to time. The effects are long lasting and cumulative." Furthermore, he explained, pale irises more widespread in northern climes are less well adapted to managing intense light.
Fortunately that most quality sunglasses bought from Britain comply with European standards (see below). Boots the chemist, which can be working with Cancer Research UK on this year's SunSmart campaign, will shortly publish guidelines on its website and advise that buyers look into the filter rating (derived from one of to four) on sunglasses: number 2 or three for holidays in the sunshine, and four to use in intense mountain or ocean light.
Low filter glasses are most likely best worn for clubbing and definitely not for driving. Obstfelt declared that trendy tinted lenses can limit one's capability to see traffic signals, something doubly important when driving abroad on unfamiliar road systems. Blue lenses, by way of example, can stop you seeing red lights. Honest, officer.
In lots of ways, sunglasses would be the ultimate emblem of Western culture: dark, twin reflections in our obsession with image, wealth and shopping. They may be ludicrously expensive, but we still purchase them. They make us look rich when we're probably not. They imply frivolity, yet they can appear threatening and evasive.
That is certainly the fascination of shades. You'd never hear that sort of psycho babble applied to sarongs, sandals or sunhats.
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