The thing with things is, a lot of times their existence is justified solely by the status the user decides to confer on them. John Lennon’s biggest legacy is, undoubtedly, the music. Now, more than three decades after his violent death, a small pair of circular frames has been walking around the world bearing his name. Lennon wouldn’t have envisaged or intended it, but John Lennon glasses they are.
At THAT Prada menswear show in Milan last year, Adrien Brody took to the wide-as-a-field ramp wearing a pair of tinted John Lennons.
More recently, Elijah Wood at The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey premiere in Wellington, New Zealand, donned a pair of John Lennon glasses, while Anne Hathaway, at Hugh Jackman’s Hollywod Walk of Fame ceremony in Hollywood, California, wore shades reminiscent of a pair the singer wore way back in 1980 — circular but with thicker plastic frames compared to the delicate metal ones that have become so irretrievably associated with him. Singer Keisha wore a version at the Jingle Bell 2012 Ball in Atlanta, Georgia. Nerdy, retro, they tick the right boxes for fashion fans.
The Potter mania that set in after the first film in the series released in 2001 saw to it that John Lennon glasses now rested on five-year-old noses. A fictional character did what most real persons couldn’t —the request at optometrists’ was for ‘Harry Potter’ glasses.
It goes on to show the power of personality — while no one’s expressed much curiosity about the brand Lennon wore, Aviators, which became such a rage after Top Gun released in 1986, remain Ray-Ban Aviators, not Tom Cruise glasses. Sophia Loren, though, managed to let celebrity supersede product — those giant irregular frame tinted glasses are known as Sophia Loren glasses and no other.
