Glasses can make the man (or woman!). Designer glasses have really sky rocketed in popularity in the last couple of years with big names like Gucci joining the market. The fact is it’s very often the other way around. Many celebs now have their own range of designer sunglasses, one example is Sophia Loren. She featured in the “Who’s That Behind Those Foster Grants?” advertising campaign (voted among the best 100 campaigns ever) along with Raquel Welch and Mia Farrow
In comedy, you only have to look as far as the two Ronnies. Messer’s Corbett and Barker flaunted their horn rims, and indeed the glasses were all the logo the show needed. Harry Hill for example would not be the same without his oversized glasses and collar. Sadly, I never knew my real ladder.” without them?
Surely the most cringingly corporate, sickeningly sycophantic and ultimately naff use of designer glasses was when Steve Wozniak, then of Apple Computers, went so far as to have Apple -shaped glasses made for him. The Apple boss Steve Jobs clearly didn’t think much of them. Some celebrity designer sunglasses are not intended to boost ego and effect, but to improve performance. The best example of this must be snooker player Dennis Taylor’s famous glasses which were designed by Jack Karnehm, better known as BBC TV’s snooker commentator from 1978 to 1993. Having served a five-year spectacle-making apprenticeship, he developed Taylor’s distinctive, swivel-lens, upside-down design. Those designer glasses helped Taylor win the 1985 world snooker title and made him seem almost exotic into the bargain!
But perhaps the most unusual celebrity Oakley glasses wearer was Eric Sykes. A comedy genius and excellent writer, Sykes was never seen without his black horn rims. But that was because he became profoundly deaf as an adult. The glasses he wore contained no lenses at all and were actually a bone-conducting hearing aid.
