The Cat Eye Sunglasses: How Did They Get So Popular?

Sunglasses weren’t mass-produced until 1929, although there’s some wonderful old footage of Queen Victoria, an enthusiastic early adopter of modern technology, wearing a pair in 1900.  The key difference between optical glasses and sunglasses is that optical glasses’ have a main function which is utility, whereas the main function of sunglasses, certainly when they were first introduced, is style.  Even though we are now acutely aware of the importance of protecting our eyes from UV rays, we will still spend a lot more time choosing a frame style than we do choosing a lens coating.  Silent comedian Harold Lloyd deserves the credit for being the first celebrity to use glasses as a style accessory.  His trademark thick rimmed round glasses, which sparked the first glasses frame style craze, contained clear glass because there was nothing wrong with his vision, they were a pure style accessory.  Despite this early craze, the designers of optical glasses were slow to realise the potential of making glasses frames that people would actually want to wear.  Dorothy Parker immortalised this state of affairs in her aphorism, ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses’.

The birth of the Cat Eye

Enter socialite and designer Altina Schinasi, who decided that the choice of optical glasses frames available to women was so unappealing that she had to do something about it.  Taking her cue from the harlequin masks that she’d seen at Venetian festivals, she designed a frame with an upsweep on the outer edge.  At a stroke she transformed the frame from a utility object to one that drew attention to the style of the design and conferred that style upon the wearer.  I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the manufacturers to whom she first took the design rejected it out of hand, such is the fate of all truly innovative ideas.  Introduced as a frame for optical glasses in the thirties and known as Harlequins the frame became an instant hit and deserves the credit for transforming eyewear from utility to fashion accessory.

Cat Eye sunglasses and screen goddesses

By the 1950’s, cat eye sunglasses were on the market.  If cat eyes had been associated with librarians and secretaries, Marilyn Monroe wearing them in her films, transformed theminto an accessory to seduction.  The pulling down of the frame onto the nose, or the slow removal of the glasses became a romantic movie staple that is still with us.  When Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s wore a pair of oversized cat eyes by Oliver Goldsmith, the frame became the most desirable design in the world and dominated the sixties.  As the decade wore on, lenses got bigger and bigger so that by the eighties, the distinctive cat eye upsweep had all but disappeared.

Retro is back

Today cat eyes are back, and you can find cat eyes in all sizes and colors, from the micro variety favoured by the Kardashians to oversized bling by Dolce & Gabbana.  Almost all popular sunglass brands have their own versions of cat eyes, like the customizable Nina cat eyes from Ray-Ban or the glossy acetate micros from Poppy Lissiman.