When thumbing through the pages of history, sometimes celebrities will stand out because of something they ordorn like Gen Douglass McAurthor with his corn cob pipe. But another feature was his American Optical pilot sunglasses.
In many cases the sunglasses are part of the mystique. Sometimes a model of frame is known as a certain person, such as John Lennon frame (not to be confused with a slightly different John Denver frame). Back in the day Bosch and Lomb had developed a black plastic frame called Wayfarer. They were popular with "beatnicks" who society at the time considered them bums so Bosch & Lomb could hardly give them away. We now know of them as Ray Ban but back then the Ray Ban was a model of pilot shades made by Bosch & Lomb. (Kinda like the SureFire 6 was once named Laser Products SureFire 6). One day an up and coming rock and roll star named Bob Dylan was photographed wearing Wayferers. Suddenly they took off in sales. That lasted for a little while but sales died down until Tom Cruise made them famous again in the 1980's in some movie where his tighty whities and Wayfarers were posters on the bedroom walls of teenage girls all over the place like Farah was on teenage boys.
Pop singer Ric Ocasek made round shades famous. Not John Lennon or John Denver type but black frame round numbers.
Your basic John Lennon type
Ric Ocasek type
Michael Jackson adorned uni-lens aviators that sold faster than ice in the desert. I think they were Ray Ban but actually don't remember except to say yeah, I had a pair. Nice shades as I recall but not something I proudly wore very often.
Sometimes celeberities wore shades that were not so obvious what brand they are. Yellowstone for example Kevin Costner plays John Dutton who wears a plain looking Wayfarer type with brown lenses but no logo can be seen. It turns out they are Varvatos V791. Expensive shades but this is a rancher with his own helicopter so no surprise there.
Two famous Steves had famous shades. Steve McQueen wore the worlds first folding sunglssses, the Persol folding version of the 649, called the 714. Non Steve McQueen, non polarized start at over $300, but they're hand made so there is that. The other Steve, Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord version) wore some really cool Hawaiian surfer shades that to this day I've yet to learn who made them. In todays fashion world they look like women's shades with big old bug eye lenses but we're talking 1960's era fashion.
Those were just cool as a polar bears toenails
Edit:
Who can forget the little known at the time military grade sunglasses made famous by the Terminator?
Gargoyles were huge at one point.
But not because Arnold wore them in the movie as much as because
Dale Earnhardt wore them.
He and his car owner Richard Childress wore the Arnold kind while hunting mostly but Dale often wore the mirrored type at the race track. Every cool race car driver wore Gargoyles at one point yet nobody was sponsored by Gargoyles, so all of those walking billboards wore them simply because they were great sunglasses.
Back when everybody said "Jeff who?" I knew the guy was going to be huge someday. The kid wore Gargoyles, nuf said!
Foster Grant was huge when Elvis Pressley and Sophia Loren wore them. Before "where's the beef" was the famous jingle "who's that behind those Foster Grants?" Eventually it was Cindy Crawford and Jeff Gordon behind those Foster Grants. Yup and it actually kept them from going under. Jeff went the way of Hulk Hogan and released products for kids. Hulk did ice cream bars, Jeff did sunglasses. Anyway Foster Grant are now available at WalMart.
Now days sunglasses are huge businesses. Brands are constantly popping up with famous people being photogrsphed in them. Like the post above mentioned "Rhinestone shades or cheap sunglasses, ZZ Top even have their own Rhinestone model by Celine
For the low price of $600.
