In 2009, they were already taking on bright colors in a collection of eight new shades. This year, Ray-Ban is reinventing its iconic sunglasses by giving them an alloy of black, grey, or brown aluminum. With their rockabilly look, you’d think these Clubmasters were straight out of a James Dean movie. Yet they actually come to us from the 80s. In 1986, Ray-Ban released the Clubmaster, halfway between Aviators and Wayfarers. Such a pairing could only yield a new icon. While that same ear the Aviators were making a big comeback after Top Gun, the Clubmaster were an immediate success as well. With their “eyebrow line” design, they have their origins in the 50s. The 7th art has made them enter into legend thanks to Malcolm X with Denzel Washington, The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon, and JFK with Kevin Costner. Films that all take place in the 50s and 60s.
As a little side note, Ray-Ban wasn’t the name of the brand’s founders, but rather comes from the expression “ray-banner”; something that “bans” sun rays. In 1929, Lieutenant John A. Macready asked Henry Lomb and John Jacob Bausch, two German-immigrant opticians in New York, to come up with new sunglasses for his men. The 20s were indeed marked by the appearance of two new engines capable of flying further and higher. The problem was that the powerful rays of the sun gave awful headaches and even nausea to the soldiers in the U.S. Army Air Service. So the duo made an “Anti-Glare” prototype in 1936 with plastic frames and lenses that would diminish the sun’s brightness without obscuring one’s view. The glasses would be remodeled the next year with a metallic frame, and Bausch and Lomb filed the patent. The Ray-Ban Aviators were born. They would soon be adopted by the greater public.
In 1952, it would be the Wayfarers that would become a success in their own. Worn by the biggest stars, immortalized by the delicious Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961, they shone with their nonconformism and resolutely rock’n’roll trapezoid shape, reminiscent of the tale fin of 50s automobiles.
Throughout the 20th century, Ray-Bans have acquired such a rep that they’re worn more for their aestheticism than for their functional ends. Never Hide, as the slogan says, because wearing Ray-Bans is asserting one’s own identity, like in the visuals for the 2012 campaign where a male couple are holding hands in New York in the 40s while another couple is kissing while protesters and police clash during the May Day protests. Ray-Ban has never blended in with the crowd thanks to an innovate nonconformism. The Clubmaster are the proof what with their retro-futuristic lines that send their rockabilly universe into outer space. You can never say it enough: fashions fade, but style never dies. Never hide, never fade.
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