History of sunglasses

Around1000 A. D. the reading stone, what we know as a magnifying glass, was developed. It was a segment of a glass sphere that could be laid against reading material to magnify the letters.

It enabled presbyopic monks to read and was probably the first reading aid. The Venetians learned how to produce glass for reading stones, and later they constructed lenses that could be held in a frame in front of the eyes instead of directly on the reading material.

The Chinese are sometimes given credit for developing spectacles about 2000 years ago--but apparently they only used them to protect their eyes from an evil force.

From the moment they were invented, glasses posed a problem that wasn't solved for almost 350 years: how to keep them on!

Spanish spectacle makers of the 17th century experimented with ribbons of silk that could be attached to the frames and then looped over the ears.The Chinese attached little ceramic or metal weights to the strings instead of making loops. In 1730 a London optician named Edward Scarlett perfected the use of rigid sidepieces that rested atop the ears. This perfection rapidly spread to the continent.

As the years passed the eyeglasses got more comfortable and aquired some major improvement,but until they became a fashion article they had to wait till after the middle of the 20th century.From that moment on many important brands such as Armani, Cartier, Carrera, Cazal, Christian Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Lozza, Nuovelle Vague, Persol, Ray Ban, Serge Kirhhofer and Zeiss began to develop models specifically designed for both men and woman to be equally functional and stylish.

That is the real starting point of vintage style,years passing by,the fashion have changed and so the way to dress, but nowadays things are coming back to the past,why? Because some products have become a status symbol, maybe because a celebrity wore them or just because their superior quality hasn’t been yet surpassed in all these years. That’s what make a piece of eyewear vintage.