Barry King/Getty Images Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story Lately I’ve been on a Bret Easton Ellis kick. While I’m not keen to adopt his characters’ disaffected attitudes—nor their dependence on Quaaludes—Ellis’s tales of 1980s Los Angeles do have me itching to buy a pair of Wayfarers.
When it comes to sunglasses trends, this decade has been spent oscillating between micro frames and face-swallowing lenses . And while both have very cherished places in my own wardrobe, I’m ready for a return to the classics. Enter the Wayfarer, the stalwart sunny that’s lived on the faces of everyone from Marilyn Monroe and Bob Dylan to Taylor Swift and Kate Moss.
Though the squared-off frames, which were released in 1952, found early popularity among the likes of classic Hollywood habitués like Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly, and James Dean, Wayfarers nearly went extinct by the 1970s. But in 1982, Ray-Ban signed a $50,000 yearly product placement deal, ensuring that the brand—including the now-ubiquitous frames—would appear in films and television. “In 1983, when Tom Cruise wore a pair in the movie Risky Business , Wayfarer's U.S. sales soared to 360,000,” Fortune reported in 1987. “In 1984 (the debut of television’s Miami Vice in which Don Johnson donned them), they reached 720,000.”
Though they broke through the zeitgeist once again thanks to the invisible hand of product placement, Wayfarers inevitably made their way into the hands (and onto the faces) of some of culture’s most powerful tastemakers: Madonna rocked a pair at Spago in 1985 (a sentence that feels like an aside in an Ellis novel); Kate Moss is a longtime fan, giving the glasses a grungy edge since the ’90s; Taylor Swift has folded them into her all-American fashion; Kate Middleton made them part of her de rigueur royal wardrobe; and A$AP Rocky even brought them to the Met Gala steps.
Nearly three-quarters of a century after they hit the market, Wayfarers feel like the true neutral of sunglasses. The square silhouette flatters just about anyone, regardless of face shape or personal style. Nowadays, amidst the deluge of futuristic wraparounds and slim sunnies, the tried-and-true Wayfarer has never felt more iconoclastic.