Fear no more the light of the sun: the ultimate travel accessory

49 SUNGLASSES

Sunglasses – they are an essential part of any traveller’s or beach-goer’s kit, whether you want to read on the sun bed, shield your eyes while you visit the pyramids, stroll along the promenade or simply see them as a style statement and part of your latest summer look. Some of the most sophisticated among us, I am told, even travel with more than one pair, the better to complement different swimsuits or outfits.

We tend to think of the famous brand names – Polaroids, Oakleys, Ray-Bans – as the classic designs which define those looks. They still reign supreme from the beaches of the Côte d’Azur to the catwalks of Paris and the red carpets of Hollywood. But they are, in fact, merely a recent development in the long history of protective eyewear. For fashion designers and film stars only began to make an impact on sunglasses in the 1930s.

Get an Inuit onto the subject and he (or she) will point out that the original concept goes back many millennia, to their Arctic ancestors, who developed special goggles to protect them from snow blindness. Instead of lenses, they cut tiny slits into discs of walrus or caribou ivory to reduce the amount of light hitting their eyes.

The first darkened lenses came much later, apparently invented by the Chinese in the 12th century, using cloven crystals of translucent quartz known as “ai tai” (dark clouds). But we can probably credit the Italians as the first to combine function with fashion.

The glassmakers of Murano were making tinted lenses by the 18th century, and they became popular with Venetian ladies who wanted to shield their eyes from the glare of the sun on the canals. With a theatrical touch, the city’s great playwright, Goldoni, added fabric shields to the sides of his – they soon became known as Goldoni glasses.

But it was the turn of the 20th century when sunglasses really took off. In 1899, the German company Rodenstock, which is still in business, was producing glasses which were designed to protect both against glare and UV light. And in 1929, Sam Foster started producing the first Foster Grants – with celluloid lenses -– which he sold to day trippers on the beaches of New Jersey.

Aviators – designed specifically for pilots – were first commissioned by the US Army Air Corps in 1935. Buzz Aldrin took his to the moon in 1969, but they achieved peak popularity in 1986 when Tom Cruise wore a pair in Top Gun. Apparently sales soared by 40 per cent after the release of the movie.

The heavy plastic frames of RayBan’s Wayfarer style were also beneficiaries of the Hollywood effect. They were launched in 1956 and proved popular with the likes of John F Kennedy and Roy Orbison, but fell out of fashion until The Blues Brothers film proved a hit in 1980 and immediately revived the style.

And so, it seems, it has not only been the glare of the sun which is behind the universal popularity of sunglasses, but the glare of publicity.

Top Gun, Maverick magic: Sporting Ray-Ban Aviators in 1986, Tom Cruise made them the epitome of cool