Sunglasses

A fashion accessory turns into a medical necessity. Images and links at articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Well, I moved to California from Ohio.

• 0:04Avery Trufelman?

  The year was 1973, and Dr. Oppenheimer had just moved to LA.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  I was in a little teeny office on Hollywood and Vine. And one day, somebody came in my office and said, "Are you an eye doctor?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, can you help me?"

• 0:23Avery Trufelman?

  This stranger had a problem. It turned out, he was a Hollywood producer, and he was working on a scene where there would be an image of a letter that was blurry and would become clear as the actor put on glasses. He figured he would go across the street and ask the local eye doctor how to do it.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  I said, "Well, that's really easy to do." He said, "Well, can you come over and talk to the cinematographer?" So I went across the street. I talked to the cinematographer, and I told him, "It's very simple. All you do is this, this, and this." So he said, "Oh, thank you so much. What's your name?"

• 0:56Avery Trufelman?

  And so Dr. Steven Oppenheimer became the eye doctor that the movie people called, and not just for camera tricks.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  So about six months later, I had my own office. We got a call one day. It was this guy. He said, "Oh, I've been looking for you. I got a problem. I gotta get a pair of glasses for Kate Jackson." And I said, "Who's that?" "Kate Jackson, Charlie's Angels." And Kate Jackson wanted a pair of glasses so that she could walk out and go to the grocery store and not be recognized.

• 1:25Avery Trufelman?

  But why can't they just go to, you know, a sunglasses hut?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Well, you don't know how Hollywood works. There wasn't a sunglasses hut in those days. So he said, "You gotta come out to the studio. And please bring some glasses." So I put some sunglasses in the case, and I went to the studio.

• 1:43Avery Trufelman?

  It started with the TV shows, with Kate Jackson, soon thereafter, Farrah Fawcett. And then eventually, Dr. Oppenheimer was procuring and fitting the sunglasses for Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Faye Dunaway. He did several movies for Stallone. He did Beetlejuice. And extremely notably, Dr. Oppenheimer put Tom Cruise in those Ray-Bans for Risky Business. This side job putting sunglasses on the stars got so successful that Dr. Oppenheimer had to hire a second doctor to take over at the practice because Dr. Oppenheimer was on set. I met Dr. Oppenheimer in a tiny conference room in Virginia Beach where about a dozen eye doctors, a few supportive spouses, and one podcaster were all gathered for the annual meeting of the Ocular Heritage Society.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  John is going top first and then Chuck will be next.

• 2:32Avery Trufelman?

  Dr. Oppenheimer talked about how he put Hollywood stars in some of the most iconic shades of the 1970s and 80s.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  I had a good time making glasses and moves.

• 2:40Avery Trufelman?

  And another doctor showed off his vast collection of pince-nez.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  And two, actor, teenager.

• 2:45Avery Trufelman?

  Another presenter gave an elaborate presentation speculating about Winston Churchill's eyeglasses.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  Churchill wearing half eyeglasses.

• 2:53Avery Trufelman?

  These were the true geeks of the eyewear world. These were the appreciators of all optical accessories. But if you happen to be at that Holiday Inn, watching us as we shuffled out for sandwiches between talks, you would have no idea. But the glasses you're wearing, where are those from?

• 3:11Speaker 04

  They're probably 10, 15 years old. I don't like to change on them.

• 3:15Avery Trufelman?

  That's so funny. Everybody was keeping it fairly conservative. You would never know that this was a group of eyewear nerds.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  Absolutely, you're right.

• 3:23Avery Trufelman?

  All of these optometrists, yes, even Hollywood's own Dr. Oppenheimer, were all wearing simple, understated, mostly wire frames. And they claimed to know nothing of fashion.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  I had a patient who came in and she said, "These are Miu Miu or Mau Mau's."

• 3:40Avery Trufelman?

  Miu Miu.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  Miu Miu.

• 3:42Avery Trufelman?

  That's product.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  I didn't know.

• 3:44Avery Trufelman?

  And yet, at the same time, when Dr. Cheryl Mitchell's patient brought in these fancy Miu Miu glasses, Dr. Mitchell immediately was like, "Oh, this looks like a pair of antique Chinese spectacles that I have in my own private nerdy collection."

• 3:58Speaker 05

  But the design and the way the frames are cut, they're Chinese spectacles. And she said, "Oh, really? I didn't know that."

• 4:04Avery Trufelman?

  There's an interest in fashion among everybody here.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, but most of us here, it's not fashion. Most of it's, it's history, to be honest with you. History and the science of vision.

• 4:13Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, it's history, but fashion is cyclical. And so if you know about the history of glasses, it gives you a leg up on eyewear trends going forward, which is exactly how Dr. Oppenheimer was able to move from Fitting glasses on movie stars to actually designing glasses for them.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  I designed the glasses. I had them made up.

• 4:33Avery Trufelman?

  It's just so amazing that you knew about the style. Like, that's basically costume design.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  That's because I had collected antiques, eyeglasses for many years.

• 4:44Avery Trufelman?

  Dr. Oppenheimer accidentally found himself in the business of cutting-edge fashion. But honestly, all of these eye doctors did. Like, these ophthalmologists and optometrists simply have to think about style, whether they like it or not.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  Fashion dictates what we've got to sell.

• 5:02Avery Trufelman?

  Dr. John Dixon-Salt was visiting from the British counterpart, the Ophthalmic Antiques International Collectors Club.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  That's the fashion. That's what they must have.

• 5:10Avery Trufelman?

  I'm kind of shocked that medically-minded people are so taken by fashion in this way.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Well, it's forced on us.

• 5:18Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, fashion is forced upon all of us, really. But I wager to say there hasn't been a medical device that has fallen prey to fashion's whims quite in the same way as has happened with glasses, and particularly sunglasses. I mean, having stylish glasses actually becomes a medical necessity. Don't take my word for it. Listen to my very own eye doctor.

• 5:43Speaker 06

  The fashion aspect there is key, because if it doesn't look good, you're not going to wear it.

• 5:48Avery Trufelman?

  And I learned this the hard way, because I found out that I have to wear this fashion accessory. And I don't understand how something like that happens. After the break.

• 6:05Speaker 07

  Hey there. It's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, whose star on The West Wing is Will Bailey, and Rishi Keshi Herway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:51Avery Trufelman?

  It's such a beautiful feeling to open up your closet and know that you have the right clothes for every occasion. The clothes that make you feel comfortable and warm and totally like yourself. But the only thing better than that feeling is giving it to someone else. This holiday season, turn to Quince. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials. We're talking Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, the kinds of pieces you'd be just as happy receiving as gifting. But here's the secret: it's so affordable. Quince's 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $50, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag. I actually recently gave my friend the Mongolian cashmere button-down polo sweater. It's so light and so soft, I just needed to share it with her.

• 7:36Avery Trufelman?

  As long as you're gifting, Quince has so much more than clothing. They've got leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, skincare, candles, jewelry, basically plenty of ways to find luxury for everyone on your list. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was articles of interest. It's the best way to support the show. The internet can be a confusing, cacophonous place, especially when you're trying to figure out anything about clothes. There's so many branded, partnered sponsorship, fake reviews, it's really hard to know what's real and what's not. But the true forum for the internet

• 8:21Avery Trufelman?

  is and always has been Reddit. What do you wear to work? What do you wear to move to a new place, or pregnancy, or a new stage of life? The place to turn to is Reddit. When it comes to clothing, you need to talk to people. You need someone with a body, with arms and legs who moves through the world and understands particular contexts. Reddit can help you understand clothes in the context of real bodies, real lives, and the way clothing operates in the world. That's why I turn to my favorite subreddit, r/buyitforlife. If I'm thinking of making the investment in an expensive piece, I want to find out from other people who've already tried it before me what it's really like. I want to know what happens after 30 wares, three washes, one unfortunate coffee incident, a full year

• 9:02Avery Trufelman?

  in someone's closet. I want the full rundown, complete with photos of the fraying, the repairs, and the surprise winners. This subreddit has very strong opinions about stitching, and I respect it. On Reddit, find fashion advice built for real bodies, real budgets, and real lives. Download the Reddit app today. I don't wear glasses, so I actually had never been to an eye doctor until my mid-30s, when I was like, "I guess I'm aging and should go get my eyes checked." So I went to this local eye doctor here in Brooklyn named Dr. Bazan.

• 9:33Speaker 06

  So it's important to remember, even if you're seeing great, you want to make sure that your eyes are healthy. So I'm happy that you were here.

• 9:39Avery Trufelman?

  In my hubris, I was like, "This should be pretty uneventful." Just like, "Show me the eye chart. I see just fine." But Dr. Bazan did a scan of my eye and told me that I sort of did need to start wearing glasses every day. Sunglasses.

• 9:51Speaker 06

  It's important to be aware that you need to have your sunglasses when you step outside and you're going to be in the sun for more than 15, 20 minutes, regardless of the season.

• 9:59Avery Trufelman?

  If I'm ever gonna be outside at all for more than 15 minutes? I don't know.

• 10:06Speaker 06

  Okay, so the whites of your eyes had a little spot of yellow on there. That little spot of yellow is early signs of sun damage. It's called a pingwakula.

• 10:14Avery Trufelman?

  It's like a tiny bump on the surface of my eye.

• 10:17Speaker 06

  This little bump is raised, so the tears don't do a great job of coating it, and it's exposed to the environment.

• 10:22Avery Trufelman?

  Oh.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  And that's where irritation can take place. If you don't use sunglasses, it will get worse.

• 10:27Avery Trufelman?

  How common is this?

• 10:28Speaker 06

  It's super common, especially people that grow up in sunny places and don't have sun protection on.

• 10:33Avery Trufelman?

  I wouldn't say that I grew up in a particularly sunny place, but it is true that I never really wore sunglasses. I was like, "What's the point? I'm just going to lose them. Besides, it's fine. I'll just squint." And now I have developed a sensitive little pingwakula that I have to protect, which means I have to get into the habit of wearing sunglasses, and like, decent quality ones.

• 10:54Speaker 06

  But you usually want to make sure that you're not buying them off the street. You're buying them at your eye doctor or a reputable brand.

• 10:59Avery Trufelman?

  It's important that sunglasses actually have UV protection, because dark lenses that don't have UV protection make your pupils dilate, so they actually let in more UV light. Basically, wearing bad sunglasses is worse than wearing no sunglasses.

• 11:13Speaker 06

  Everybody should be wearing sunglasses.

• 11:15Avery Trufelman?

  Is this like, just kind of general advice you give to everyone?

• 11:20Avery Trufelman?

  Yes.

• 11:21Speaker 08

  I thought I was special.

• 11:22Avery Trufelman?

  I'm not special, and neither is my pingwakula. And so, on doctor's orders, I found myself in the market for sunglasses. But then, as luck would have it, a very friendly branding person named Charlotte cold emailed me to invite me to some new glasses shop of some company I'd never heard of before. And I was like, hmm, I wonder if they'll give me sunglasses.

• 11:45Speaker 09

  And we're British brands.

• 11:46Avery Trufelman?

  I was like, okay.

• 11:47Speaker 09

  We actually have 18 stores in the UK, and this is our second in New York. Tom, our founder, is in the back, so I'll introduce you as well.

• 11:54Avery Trufelman?

  Okay.

• 11:54Speaker 09

  This is Tom.

• 11:55Speaker 10

  Hi, I'm Tom.

• 11:56Avery Trufelman?

  I don't know if you were planning on working right now. No, no, it's cool, we don't have to talk.

• 11:59Speaker 10

  Do you wear glasses?

• 12:00Avery Trufelman?

  I don't.

• 12:01Speaker 10

  Okay, well, one day you will.

• 12:03Avery Trufelman?

  And with that portentation of doom, I met the founder of the glasses company Cubits, Tom Broughton.

• 12:09Speaker 10

  When you get to about 40, 45, the front of your cornea hardens, and then you'll be reading glasses for the first time.

• 12:16Avery Trufelman?

  Tom, however, started wearing glasses young.

• 12:19Speaker 10

  I was like 14, 15, and I was like, where's the frame that Charles Kocher wears? Where's the frame that Morrissey wears? Then I got into vintage frames in my twenties and collected a lot of them. And they've got amazing design history glasses.

• 12:29Avery Trufelman?

  So many design elements of glasses, even the choices that seem purely aesthetic were designed from a place of practicality.

• 12:36Speaker 10

  And a lot of the origins of frames comes from the lenses.

• 12:41Avery Trufelman?

  Like, some of the earliest glasses were perfectly round circles, because when the lenses were made with heavy mineral glass, a little round eye was easiest to cut. But in the 30s, it was decided that the optimum shape for eye movement was something called the panto.

• 12:54Speaker 10

  Which is short for pantoscopic, but it's a little bit wider at the top because how an eyeball moves within the socket. So when your eyeball moves, it moves in like a T shape.

• 13:03Avery Trufelman?

  Or even little details like what's called a keyhole bridge, like when glasses have those jaunty little cutaways from the nose bridge.

• 13:09Speaker 10

  That was a kind of invention from post-war, when they didn't have access to materials, so they couldn't make new frames. So to get a frame to fit, they would literally cut a bit away so it could fit on a...

• 13:22Avery Trufelman?

  On different noses.

• 13:23Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of the design features that we see now were born out of necessity, as ever.

• 13:29Avery Trufelman?

  And it might seem clear that that necessity is to protect our eyes from the sun. But in early versions of sunglasses, they weren't really about sun protection.

• 13:38Speaker 10

  There's a person you should speak to called Neil Handley, who runs the College Optometry in London. He runs this, he's one of the very few optical museums in the world.

• 13:45Avery Trufelman?

  Tom raved about this cool place called the British Optical Association Museum at the College of Optometrists in London. How big is the collection?

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Well, we have around 28,000 catalogued items in the collection, and the collection is growing by approximately seven or 800 items per year.

• 14:04Avery Trufelman?

  And in the collection that Dr Neil Handley oversees, there are a number of early forerunners to the modern sunglasses. For example, there are these Inuit eye covers. They're made out of bone, and they have slits over the eyes. And if you look through those slits, it cuts out glare from the sun, which is very helpful for vision and making it easier to see in the snow. But those aren't glasses, per se.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Because they don't have any form of lens in them, they're not really part of the history of spectacles.

• 14:32Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, but in 12th century China, judges wore tinted glasses to hide their eyes.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  Judges would wear dark lenses, so you couldn't detect what they were deliberating about.

• 14:42Avery Trufelman?

  But that wasn't about sun protection.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Now, at the same time, in parallel to that, you have the history of what we would now call protective eyewear, to guard the eyes as a protective barrier from all sorts of things, including the wind, from dust, from stray fragments if you're operating a tool, for example, or chopping wood.

• 15:02Avery Trufelman?

  There were also special glasses that were meant to protect the eyes while you were, say, riding on a train, which could leave you at the mercy of smoke and dust and debris and wind. But these were sort of like a cross between goggles and glasses.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  And these things could have tinted lenses, which could guard against glare, but they're not necessarily protection against the sun, as we would understand it. So sunglasses are in fact a relatively modern concept.

• 15:27Avery Trufelman?

  And even still, some of the earliest examples of what we would now call sunglasses were only for very specialized patients.

• 15:34Speaker 10

  But the first person who ever made sunglasses is in 1780 something. At the time, in the 18th century Britain, there was a big problem with syphilis.

• 15:42Avery Trufelman?

  Someone please hire me to do a special series on syphilis. So much comes back to syphilis.

• 15:46Speaker 10

  And one of the symptoms of syphilis being light hypersensitivity. And tinted lenses alleviate the conditions of syphilis. I just think there's something quite ironic that this bastion of fashion has its roots in venereal disease.

• 15:59Avery Trufelman?

  Although it's also a little fitting, like in the 1780s, if you saw someone in tinted glasses, you'd be like, that guy fucks.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Syphilis could lead to scarring of the front surface of the eye, making your eyes both weak and sensitive. So dark lenses might be very necessary then, but also because there was the disfiguring effect.

• 16:18Avery Trufelman?

  Right. These glasses were also to hide the outward effects of syphilis, similarly to how dark glasses were worn to hide eyes from onlookers if you were, say, blind. So, again, not entirely about the sun.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  So sunglasses are in fact a relatively modern concept.

• 16:36Avery Trufelman?

  The name sunglasses, as in glasses that protect from the sun, doesn't really arrive until the 1890s. And one way they come on the scene is through the popularization of new kinds of sports. Alpine sports, like skiing and hiking and other stuff in the snow was really hard to do with a parasol or a big hat.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  And they started to wear spectacles with tinted lenses.

• 17:00Avery Trufelman?

  Mostly to be able to see in the bright snow.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  And so these are the first sunglasses, and they often made them locally in workshops.

• 17:08Avery Trufelman?

  That was mostly a European movement. Stateside, sunglasses were starting to be worn in our sports.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  One of those was American baseball. The press reported when they weren't wearing their dark glasses and therefore missed catching the ball.

• 17:21Avery Trufelman?

  And let's say you wanted to go see some of this American baseball or wanted to participate in one of these mountain sports you've heard so much about. You might have to take a multi-week transatlantic boat trip, in which case you'll have to pack the sunglasses you bought last winter in St. Moritz, darling.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  They start to be used for new social pursuits, such as going across the ocean in an ocean liner and reclining on the sundeck.

• 17:46Avery Trufelman?

  And this part is sort of obvious, but as we roll into the end of the 19th century, in industrializing countries, sunlight becomes a luxury.

• 17:56Avery Trufelman?

  Something once loathed and avoided by agricultural workers is now out of reach to the pasty factory worker. And so this sense of luxury was apparent in the actual sunglasses.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  They're studded with jewels. They're made out of a more expensive metal such as gold or silver. But of course, metals heat up in the sun, so are not necessarily the best material to use for sunglasses.

• 18:20Avery Trufelman?

  On the more practical side, there were many expensive unsustainable materials like tortoise shell, maybe inlaid with mother of pearl.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  You get the crossover between the work of the optician, the spectacle maker, and the jeweler. And so some of these things will be purchased from jewelry shops.

• 18:36Avery Trufelman?

  But I think we all know that just because something might be expensive, that does not make it cool. Those are two different things. Like even when sunglasses started to be cheaper and made of plastic, they were still niche.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  In the 1950s, sunglasses would still have been a minority interest. If you had gone to a beach, you would have spotted that the majority of the people on that beach would not have been wearing sunglasses.

• 19:05Avery Trufelman?

  So what about sunglasses makes them so cool? I mean, that is the emoji for cool, a smiley face wearing sunglasses.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  It's a phenomenon. And somebody actually got their doctorate from studying that very concept. There's actually a PhD thesis was written on sunglasses and the concept of cool.

• 19:23Avery Trufelman?

  That thesis was written by Vanessa Brown.

• 19:26Speaker 09

  I'm based in the Department of Fashion and Textiles in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University.

• 19:32Avery Trufelman?

  Vanessa Brown also turned her thesis into a book called Cool Shades: The History and Meaning of Sunglasses. She basically explores how these things became the forever flag bearer of cool.

• 19:43Speaker 09

  The whole point of things that are cool is that they quickly become uncool. And yet, somehow or the other, they just didn't seem to lose that status. So I thought, here's a thing that's so resilient to the idea of perennial change, that there must be something really interesting about this.

• 20:00Avery Trufelman?

  And low and behold, there are many interesting things about this. Sunglasses became the manifestation of coolness based on a few key factors that all happened at the same time. But all of these reasons were only barely related to the sun. Like, actually, there was a line of thought that maybe sunglasses were just a cool accessory. That were bad for your eyes.

• 20:22Speaker 09

  In the journals, in the first half of the 20th century, most of the discussion is about how people shouldn't be wearing sunglasses because actually, eyes are equipped with the ability to adjust to life anyway. So there's a lot of warning about people wearing sunglasses too much, too often, in the wrong settings.

• 20:42Avery Trufelman?

  Sunglasses were much less about the sun and much more about the stars.

• 20:48Speaker 09

  By the end of the 1930s, the connection with celebrity is the main thing, making people want sunglasses.

• 20:56Avery Trufelman?

  Sunglasses became something that every movie star had on their person.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  And the assumption is, and this would be a natural assumption, this must be because these people are out in California where it's sunny.

• 21:08Avery Trufelman?

  That's what I assumed.

• 21:09Speaker 04

  In reality, these photographs are taken in the studio.

• 21:13Avery Trufelman?

  A lot of these on-set candidates were taken by the movie studios and put in magazines to promote the star and the movie they were working on.

• 21:20Speaker 09

  So it was quite nice to have these images of people when they weren't actually being filmed.

• 21:24Avery Trufelman?

  And so in these sort of sanctioned behind-the-scenes pictures that the movie studios would make, stars always had their sunglasses on.

• 21:31Speaker 09

  But this was a way of ensuring that they still looked okay, like they didn't look tired or they didn't have their makeup off or ever. So some quite odd pictures of celebrities in sunglasses eating their lunch in a trailer.

• 21:44Avery Trufelman?

  Looking glamorous in their cultivated mystique.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  There's a huge growth in the sale of sunglasses encouraged by film stars.

• 21:53Avery Trufelman?

  And then when the paparazzi became a thing, the need for sunglasses became even greater.

• 21:57Speaker 09

  The technology that those paparazzi used was quite violent. They didn't have long zoom lenses, so they would have to sort of like jump out of a bush at you, explode the flashbulb, it shatters. And it would actually be quite an alarming thing to happen.

• 22:14Avery Trufelman?

  And the alarm was, of course... The point.

• 22:18Speaker 09

  They would quite like this because they would get pictures of celebrities looking shocked.

• 22:22Avery Trufelman?

  Sunglasses were more than just a disguise. They were a way to hide any shock that might happen. There was no way to read the emotions.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Hidden behind this self-imposed shield that the glasses provided. And you can control how much of you is seen.

• 22:39Avery Trufelman?

  Which is part of the reason why jazz musicians started wearing sunglasses indoors at night at the club, at least according to the sociologist Howard Becker, who famously studied jazz musicians.

• 22:51Speaker 09

  Howard S. Becker interviewed a load of jazz men. He said that they developed all sorts of behaviors so that they wouldn't have to make eye contact with the audience. That's because a lot of their audiences were white and not very cool at all.

• 23:05Avery Trufelman?

  Miles Davis probably did not want to invite eye contact with one of his dorky white fans who'd be like, heya, can you play? She'll be coming around the mountain.

• 23:13Speaker 09

  You know, when I was growing up, DJs would do this. They'd like their headphones on, like, I can't hear you. Because they don't want to play the thing that you are going to request.

• 23:24Avery Trufelman?

  In a smoky mid-century jazz club, sunglasses were protection for the artist. It allowed the musician to communicate with his higher muses, to transcend the crowd.

• 23:36Speaker 09

  And there's something really quintessentially jazz about this. It really is about being at one with your instrument and being self-possessed.

• 23:46Avery Trufelman?

  Also, many of these musicians were on drugs.

• 23:48Speaker 09

  It would be easy for people to tell that they were taking heroin.

• 23:52Avery Trufelman?

  No need to show any dilated pupils here, just keeping it low-key.

• 23:57Avery Trufelman?

  So sunglasses get associated with drugs, sex, jazz, a fast-paced lifestyle that doesn't accommodate hats and parasols and cars that kick up dust and sports played outside and lounging on ship decks looking like a movie star. Sunglasses are just cool.

• 24:14Avery Trufelman?

  Even sunglasses that aren't cool, per se, like the flashy novelty sunglasses that are shaped like animals or hearts or suns.

• 24:22Speaker 09

  Are these kinds of novelty sunglasses, can they be considered cool? Most people would probably have said no, because they're kitsch. Coolness is rarely silly.

• 24:33Avery Trufelman?

  But Vanessa Brown insists that even those corny sunglasses were rebellious in their way. They were a statement of radical frivolity.

• 24:42Speaker 09

  Radical frivolity is a kind of absolute commitment to pleasure. The antithesis of the thrifty Protestant judicious housewife. The antithesis of that, also an antithesis of good taste, understatement.

• 24:57Avery Trufelman?

  And, and, and, and, at the same time sunglasses were cool and rarified, they were starting to become essential to normal, everyday people in normal, everyday circumstances. And again, not exactly because of the sun. It struck me that your overarching thesis was that although sunglasses are named for the sun, in the modern age, they are way more about other people.

• 25:23Speaker 09

  Absolutely. I think that the major function that sunglasses have is in mediating the gaze.

• 25:30Avery Trufelman?

  Of course, humans have used all kinds of objects to protect themselves from the eyes of others.

• 25:35Speaker 09

  Before sunglasses became this kind of gaze mediator, there were other things that people used.

• 25:40Avery Trufelman?

  A fan that fluttered over the face, a parasol that cast a shadow over the eyes, a hat brim that could be pulled down low.

• 25:48Speaker 09

  Newspapers, cigarettes even, a thing that you can look involved in your own world. You're not bothered by anybody else.

• 25:55Avery Trufelman?

  This purpose is also served by your big headphones, or the mask over your mouth, or your gaze on your phone. These are what sociologist Urban Goffman called involvement shields. How great is that term, involvement shields? These are little tools of distraction, which in urban life, become vital.

• 26:16Speaker 09

  George Zimmel, who was a German sociologist, said over 100 years ago that just living in an urban environment brought so many risks, where there's so much potentially unwelcome interaction and information, that people would likely have two responses. One, they would become a nervous wreck, or they would become blasé. So sunglasses.

• 26:43Speaker 09

  Really critical here because they've emerged as a really useful tool to help you look blase, even if you feel like a nervous wreck. So I think this is part of the reason that sunglasses have remained such a popular signifier in visual culture, because this is a part of coolness that it becomes especially valuable.

• 27:04Avery Trufelman?

  So valuable that companies quickly looked to bottle this feeling and sell it.

• 27:09Speaker 09

  One of the really early reviews of the Ray-Ban, the reviewer initially describes himself as skeptical about the need for sunglasses, says that when he tries them, behind the Ray-Ban glass, one experiences a coolness only to be described as delicious.

• 27:29Avery Trufelman?

  Mmm, Ray-Ban's so delicious that they have become the Coca-Cola of the eyes.

• 27:36Speaker 10

  If you ask 100 people on the street to name glasses brands, they'll be like Ray-Ban.

• 27:40Avery Trufelman?

  After the break, the one company that makes almost all the sunglasses. I'm like, yeah, it's Ray-Ban, but I'm not actually talking about Ray-Ban. I'm talking about the company behind Ray-Ban, the company that makes the vast majority of eyewear in the world, even when it seems like we have so many choices.

• 28:00Speaker 07

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com.

• 28:32Avery Trufelman?

  I'm in the East Village in front of Fabulous Fannies, waiting for Tom. Tom Broughton, the founder of the company Cubits, invited me to meet him in a different glasses store called Fabulous Fannies. I want to warn you, I'm live.

• 28:45Speaker 10

  Oh, my life!

• 28:46Avery Trufelman?

  Just rolling. This is a destination for vintage frames and niche brands.

• 28:51Speaker 10

  Oh, my life!

• 28:54Avery Trufelman?

  I watched as Tom was all but salivating over a pair of sunglasses that looked like two clinking glasses of brandy, complete with clear ice cubes.

• 29:04Speaker 10

  They're ice cubes in the tent.

• 29:05Avery Trufelman?

  Tom admitted that, sure, even though he loves and collects novelty eyewear and makes a lot of fun, wacky frames himself. He probably wouldn't wear sunglasses like this. He actually doesn't wear sunglasses at all. Don't have any sunglasses. You don't believe in them? No, I do believe in them. They're nice, but I wear glasses all the time. Tom wears his eyeglasses, which are clear, but they have UV protection. So you actually don't need dark shades for protection from the sun.

• 29:29Speaker 10

  It's independent of the tint.

• 29:31Avery Trufelman?

  The shade of the lens is mostly just to reduce the strain on your eye. So sunglasses don't have to be any particular shade. There's a lot of variety that's possible in sunglasses. And there, at Fabulous Fannies, I was bombarded with a ton of wild-looking designs from many supposedly iconic eyewear companies that I had never heard of before. Like, for example, Cutler and Gross.

• 29:55Speaker 10

  Cutler and Gross is one of the reasons I fell in love with glasses.

• 29:57Avery Trufelman?

  They made Jarvis Cocker's chunky glasses. And then there's Kazal.

• 30:01Speaker 10

  So Kazal have got actually a fascinating history.

• 30:03Avery Trufelman?

  Kazal was a West German company that made these thick, sensible frames for German bankers until Run DMC started wearing them.

• 30:11Speaker 10

  But it's got associated with New York hip-hop culture.

• 30:13Avery Trufelman?

  Not to mention the Kazal Boys with their 1985 single, "Snatchin' Kazals."

• 30:21Avery Trufelman?

  But a pioneering eyewear brand that looms quite large, both for Tom and for sunglasses in general, is a much older brand called Oliver Goldsmith.

• 30:31Speaker 10

  So like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, she's wearing an Oliver Goldsmith.

• 30:34Avery Trufelman?

  The Breakfast at Tiffany's sunglasses are a model that Oliver Goldsmith still makes today. The model is called Manhattan, even though the company is British, as you can hear in the accent of fourth-generation Goldsmith Claire Goldsmith.

• 30:45Speaker 11

  Audrey's films, the actual Givenchy outfit was brought into our offices so that we could see what it was that we were designing glasses to go with.

• 30:56Avery Trufelman?

  Claire Goldsmith wasn't there designing Audrey Hepburn's glasses, but her family was. Her great-grandfather started Oliver Goldsmith in 1926, and then Claire's grandfather took over the company. And then, just by chance, he changed eyewear forever.

• 31:10Speaker 11

  We were based in Soho, central London, and it was quite a manufacturing area at the time. And next door to us was a manufacturer of clothing, and they made buttons.

• 31:22Avery Trufelman?

  And these buttons were being made out of a revolutionary new material called...

• 31:28Avery Trufelman?

  Plastic.

• 31:29Speaker 11

  Not easy to get hold of. You couldn't get it. It was the late 1930s.

• 31:34Avery Trufelman?

  Claire's grandfather cut a deal with the owner of this factory and gave him some spectacle frames in exchange for some sheets of plastic. And this plastic was actually very boring. It was like this bland beige color.

• 31:46Speaker 11

  It was a very nude kind of color, they were, a little insipid.

• 31:51Avery Trufelman?

  But he took this plastic and turned it into a pair of pinkish beige, plastic glasses. And he named those glasses Dawn.

• 31:59Speaker 11

  Dawn, exactly. The dawn of plastic. It really was a pivotal moment for eyewear being able to transcend into fashion.

• 32:08Avery Trufelman?

  Fashion, meaning like something that goes in and out of style, that you change with the seasons, or with your handbag, or your outfit. Because not only was plastic cheap, it was extremely subject to trend.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  Because plastic allows you to introduce color into the story.

• 32:25Avery Trufelman?

  Again, Dr. Neil Handley of the British Optical Association Museum at the College of Optometrists in London.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Instead of brown and gray eyewear, you have red, green, blue, yellow. And you can start to mix and match spectacle frames to coordinate with your wardrobe.

• 32:41Avery Trufelman?

  A great excuse to go shopping.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  And what we did get was the introduction from the 1950s onwards of brand names that didn't originate as optical brands.

• 32:54Avery Trufelman?

  Brands that had no experience designing eyewear.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  So I'm talking about fashion houses.

• 32:59Avery Trufelman?

  Take, for example, the iconic mini dress designer Mary Quant, who designed a line of big, colorful glasses in 1973.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  The Mary Quant sunglasses were actually very poorly fitting.

• 33:10Avery Trufelman?

  Who would have guessed, designing eyeglasses is a completely separate art from designing clothes. Eyewear design is more specific and exacting than I can reasonably attempt to describe on a podcast. So suffice to say, for her next range of glasses in 1974, Mary Quant handed the reins over to an actual optometrist.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  And that was a much more commercially successful range.

• 33:30Avery Trufelman?

  And so when Dior wanted to have some sunglasses, they turned to none other than Oliver Goldsmith.

• 33:35Speaker 11

  With Dior, they didn't make glasses. So they just asked us to make them some.

• 33:40Avery Trufelman?

  The fashion house paid the optical company to make glasses. Great. This is how the industry worked, and it was pretty straightforward, right? Fashion houses reach out to glasses manufacturers and ask to make their lines of eyewear and sunglasses. Until. One optical company completely flipped this approach. Beginning in the late 80s, this eyewear manufacturer began approaching fashion houses and paying them.

• 34:05Speaker 11

  They went to Armani and said, hey, we would like to make glasses with your brand on and we'll give you some money for every pair we sell. And Armani said, ah, yeah, okay, why not? And that was the first eyewear license. And the whole industry of eyewear licensing stems from that.

• 34:23Avery Trufelman?

  That innovative Italian eyewear company was called Luxottica. And after the Armani deal, Luxottica eventually started to license other brands, including Ralph Lauren, Tiffany's, Prada, Burberry, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Vogue, and many, many, many, many more. Today, Luxottica designs and makes eyewear for over 150 major brands.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  And you may see these names on shelves in an optical practice and think that they are rival products from different manufacturers, but you may well find many of them are made by the same company in the same factory.

• 34:58Avery Trufelman?

  Luxottica is the biggest one, but there are a few other players in the sunglasses licensing game, like Marklin, which has agreements with Guess and Adidas. And then there's Saffolo, which has Levi's and Under Armour. And there's Marchand, who licensed Khloe and Lacoste and Calvin Klein. And basically, all of these brand affiliations turned sunglasses into affordable luxuries, like lipstick or perfume, a way to capture a bit of brand magic.

• 35:23Speaker 11

  It was the days when, do you remember when you used to have like Armani or whatever emblazoned across your chest? Logomania, logomania.

• 35:31Avery Trufelman?

  Luxottica was churning out hundreds of new designs for dozens of well-known brands. And Oliver Goldsmith could not compete.

• 35:39Speaker 11

  Big brands were what people wanted. Us being a British, handcrafted, little, independent eyewear company just wasn't what people wanted. So the company shut down.

• 35:51Avery Trufelman?

  And then, shortly after Oliver Goldsmith's shutdown, a major factor in sunglasses emerged, which is the actual freaking sun.

• 36:04Avery Trufelman?

  The 1980s brings a new rise in budget airlines and hotels and a proliferation of sunbathing. The ozone layer, which had been slowly getting depleted over the course of the 1970s, was now weaker at protecting against UV light. And people found out about this because melanoma was killing people. According to a 2021 study from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, since 1981, skin cancer rates have increased by 550% in men and 250% in women.

• 36:33Speaker 09

  It's with our understanding about UV, people start thinking about sun protection.

• 36:40Avery Trufelman?

  That's Vanessa Brown again, author of the book Cool Shades.

• 36:43Speaker 09

  It really isn't until the 90s that you see emphasis on the sun as a source of harm in the way these things are marketed.

• 36:52Avery Trufelman?

  Sunglasses actually become a medical device.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  It's more like going full circle because there absolutely were protective devices in origin.

• 37:03Avery Trufelman?

  Dr. Neil Handley would like to remind you that sunglasses really started as goggles, and then after a long life as a fashion accessory, they became protective again.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Yes, it was only in relatively recent times, within my lifetime, that medical regulations were enforced. It was around 1992 that there was legislation passed in the United Kingdom to ensure that all sunglass lenses were compliant with British standards, which have since been incorporated within international ISO standards.

• 37:38Avery Trufelman?

  Apparently, Australia may have introduced UV standards as early as the 70s, but back then, sunglasses technology wasn't protective enough yet.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  But it is one useful warning to consumers today. If they want to wear vintage sunglasses, they should be aware that the lenses may not meet modern safety requirements.

• 37:58Avery Trufelman?

  The UV filtration has to do with the coating on lenses and the way it's applied, and it turned this fashion accessory into a necessity for living on Earth. UV on the short term can cause sunburns to our eyes. That is, once again, my own eye doctor, Dr. Bazan. It's called photokeratitis. Inside the eye, the sun causes cataract formation. Sunlight becomes another danger to add to the litany of dangers of everyday existence. And so, the act of simply walking out into the sun now takes on a sense of risk, which makes it... Cool.

• 38:33Speaker 09

  The risk from the sun, sunglasses are a way of kind of demonstrating that you're really cool, but at the same time, you're protecting yourself against the dangers of doing these things by having this particular sun cream, these particular sunglasses.

• 38:51Avery Trufelman?

  What a testament to sunglasses coolness, right? That they stayed cool even after they became a safety device? Like, this will never happen with bike helmets. So the sunglasses market now expanded to include kind of everyone on the planet. Like, now we were all supposed to wear them for our health. And so, in a very shrewd move, in 1995, Luxottica acquired LensCrafters.

• 39:15Speaker 12

  LensCrafters, the largest eyewear retail chain in North America.

• 39:19Avery Trufelman?

  In this episode of 60 Minutes, Leslie Stahl really took Luxottica to task for price fixing.

• 39:24Speaker 12

  I asked LensCrafters president Mark Wykel, "How many non-Luxottica brands do you sell here?"

• 39:30Speaker 13

  We probably have a few brands that are not Luxottica.

• 39:34Speaker 12

  Mostly Luxottica.

• 39:35Speaker 13

  Mostly Luxottica, yeah.

• 39:36Avery Trufelman?

  Ugh, Leslie Stahl, you icon.

• 39:38Speaker 12

  Luxottica also owns Sunglass Hut, the largest sunglass chain in the world.

• 39:44Avery Trufelman?

  And in a sunglass hut, you will find brands that Luxottica has outright purchased over the years, like Oakley and Ray-Ban.

• 39:55Speaker 12

  And Ray-Ban is the top-selling sunglass brand in the world.

• 39:59Avery Trufelman?

  Ray-Bans used to be made by the American optical firm Bausch & Loom, which had fallen on hard times and was bought by Luxottica in 1999. And so, Ray-Bans, by their very ubiquity and availability, became the sunglasses to wear.

• 40:15Speaker 11

  Ray-Ban, Ray-Ban, that would be my biggest gripe in life, is just seeing every man and his dog wearing Ray-Ban.

• 40:23Avery Trufelman?

  Sunglasses became less of a statement. Like, if everyone was supposed to be wearing them, they didn't have to be as stylish anymore.

• 40:29Speaker 10

  Don't you think it's just the industry's got more boring over time? People just start playing it safe.

• 40:33Avery Trufelman?

  Do you think, like, everything got boring because of Luxottica? Like, is it all...

• 40:37Speaker 10

  A little, don't you think?

• 40:39Avery Trufelman?

  And so, of course, there was the backlash to Luxottica. The startups and the direct-to-consumer brands arrived, offering cheaper frames. And a new wave of designers began to push aesthetic boundaries. Like, Tom Broughton started Qubits. And Claire Goldsmith revived the family business and relaunched Oliver Goldsmith in 2005.

• 40:56Speaker 11

  It was received so warmly. When I kind of went back out to the market and I said, "Oh, Oliver Goldsmith back", there was still a lot of people that remembered it. But then the younger generation immediately picked up on the references.

• 41:07Avery Trufelman?

  And it's not just about the style of these things. There is a quality difference that matters in sunglasses. Even the plastic-looking ones. Like, I didn't know this. Did you know that acetate is made with cotton?

• 41:20Speaker 11

  Cellulose acetate is made from cotton. And they mix it with plasticizers that form this kind of jelly in sheets.

• 41:26Avery Trufelman?

  Oh.

• 41:27Speaker 11

  When the jelly becomes firm, they peel these big sheets and they hang them in huge drying rooms. And the drying process is so important, and it cannot be rushed, right?

• 41:39Avery Trufelman?

  And it's certainly easier to monitor quality control when you make fewer frames.

• 41:43Speaker 10

  I think that size is perfect. That size in a black or a dark gray would look really nice.

• 41:49Avery Trufelman?

  And so, when my new sunglasses arrived, custom-cut and fitted to my face, I enjoyed the soothing weight of the thick acetate resting on my ears. I appreciate the smooth way the arms hinge up and down, the way the lenses fully cover my eyes. And I appreciate the little shield they make for me in the world. I no longer think it's silly to wear sunglasses inside or on the subway. I think it's OK that they're also about style. It's built into them. And it's something the optometrists have made peace with. No, I mean, they're functional. I mean, they're functional fashion.

• 42:31Avery Trufelman?

  Thank you so much to Dr. Drew Miller and everyone at the Ocular Heritage Society for letting me crash their annual meeting. It was actually a blast. Special thanks also to Dr. Neil Handley, who was actually there at the meeting. And thanks as well to Tom Broughton and everyone at Qubits for being the ones to send me down this rabbit hole. Also, thanks to Rachel Cohen and Jess Lunning and Seir Kavado. This script was edited by the one and only Allison Behringer. Thank you, Allison. And if you'd like to see pictures of my cool new sunglasses, as well as images of what some old precursors to sunglasses look like, head to articlesofinterest.substack.com. Okay, more next month.