Reinforcing the look were the countless pictures of pilots and crewmen wearing aviators for the exact function they were made. General Douglas MacArthur is probably the most famous example, with the pictures of him returning to the Philippines doing most of the legwork. During the Second World War, the public was inundated with images of aviators in the Pacific and European Theaters. As such, they came with a price tag of several dollars, a prohibitive and irrational expense, especially because the late 30s were a time you could buy perfectly acceptable sunglasses for a quarter.Īviator popularity didn’t explode until the world did. These were glasses with lenses that were meant to fight the glare and brightness of light in the upper atmosphere. They were sporting equipment for men who needed specialized functionality, not something every guy needed for walking around. ![]() The aviator sunglasses were marketed pretty heavily as a product for outdoorsmen. From what we can tell, they were successful from the beginning.īut they weren’t the ubiquitous eyewear nostalgia makes them out to be. What we would recognize as fully-fledged aviators came a year later, as Bausch & Lomb’s Ray-Ban Aviators, complete with a metal frame.Ĭonsumer Reluctance and War-time PopularityĪ lot of modern retrospection on aviators talks about how the glasses were an instant classic, but we have a feeling people are assigning a lot of retroactive popularity to a product they can’t imagine not being popular. Their frame was made of plastic and they didn’t yet carry the “aviator” name. The first commercially available set was released in 1937, though with a few key differences. Out of that collaboration, though it seems Macready did the majority of the legwork, came the original aviator sunglasses: tint, shape, fit, and all. Macready already had problems with the goggles that pilots were using at the time, but something about this flight must have set him off because, in 1929, he started working with Bausch & Lomb, an eye health and protection firm, to design better eyewear for pilots. Presumably, Macready was thinking of those same eyes when he used the same plane a month later to try and beat Shroeder’s record altitude and was using goggles similar to Shroeder’s. Macready helped Shroeder out of his plane, simultaneously having the image of his friend’s swollen, frozen eyes burned into his memory. Somehow, he managed to land the plane.īack on the ground, Lt. Shroeder’s eyes froze over, which is not a pleasant thing to have to type and imagine, let alone experience. His eyes were now directly exposed to the sub-zero temperatures of that altitude. The only real solution available to him at the moment was to take the goggles off completely, but that prompted another problem. ![]() While he was up there, his goggles fogged up, totally obscuring his vision. In 1920, Shorty Shroeder pushed a biplane to its limits, taking it up above 33,000 feet. One such problem was the maliciously cold air of the upper atmosphere, where minus 80 Fahrenheit is not a rare temperature. Technology has moved incredibly quickly since the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903, which means humanity encountered and solved a ton of ridiculously complex problems in a very short amount of time. This is the history of Ray-Ban’s aviator sunglasses.ĭespite what the ubiquity of modern air travel would have you think, humans have only been flying around for a little over a century. ![]() We were also thinking it was about time we went into deeper detail here, so let’s rehash a bit of what we’ve already written, then dive deeper into aviators’ rise to popularity and what they look like in the modern world. They came up when we were talking about menswear pulled straight out of the military. BRIDGE: The classic Ray-Ban Aviator maintains a straight top bar bridge while the Ray-Ban Cockpit has a down-curved bridge.If the history of aviator sunglasses sounds familiar, you’d be right. MADE IN: The Ray-Ban classic Aviators till this day are all made in Italy, meanwhile the Ray-Ban Cockpit sunglasses are now being made in China.ĥ. The Ray-Ban Cockpit come in two different sizes, 56mm and 59mm.Ĥ. The Ray-Ban classic Aviator comes in 3 different sizes (CLICK HERE FOR A FULL RAY-BAN 3025 SIZE REVIEW,) 55m, 58mm and 62mm. SIZE: The Ray-Ban Aviator and Ray-Ban Cockpit come in two different sizes which makes them extremely different from one another. MATERIAL: They both are made out of metal.ģ. The Ray-Ban cockpit 3362 while has an aviator shape, it’s much less subtle and a squarish aviator shape and not a tear drop.Ģ. SHAPE: The shape of the classic Ray-Ban Aviator RB 3025 is the classic original aviator with a ‘tear-drop’ designed frame. If you’re in the market looking to buy a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators, a lot of the time you might be comparing the Ray-Ban RB 3025 vs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |