Cinema invented the modern idea of sunglasses. Not optometry, not aviation: the screen. From the late 1930s the dark frame became a character in its own right, and the codes set then have barely changed since.
In brief
- Cinema turned sunglasses from eye protection into a language of character and ease.
- The Riviera silhouette, dark frame and pale linen, was set on screen in the 1950s and never aged.
- The folding racing frame became shorthand for composure under pressure.
- The oversized tortoise cat-eye defined a feminine glamour that still runs through fashion today.
- Berenford works in this lineage: the Gatsby, the Sofia, the Le Mans.
The Riviera silhouette
In the mid-1950s a leading man drove the Grand Corniche above the Côte d'Azur in dark acetate frames so well cut they looked bespoke. The film fixed what we still call the Riviera look: a dark frame, pale linen, white-soled deck shoes, a watch worn slightly loose. Seventy years on, the geometry has not aged a day. The Gatsby Vintage Turtle answers it.
The racing frame
By the early 1970s the folding aviator with a faint petrol-blue tint had become the uniform of the driver: the look of a professional who stays calm at speed. It is a frame that belongs to the pit lane and the open road, and it is the spirit behind the Le Mans world.
The feminine cat-eye
An oversized tortoise cat-eye, worn by one actress in one New York film of 1961, set a code so durable that versions of it have run through the sixty-five years since. It lifts the face and finishes a look without a word. The Sofia is its descendant.
The eye of Slim Aarons
The photographer Slim Aarons never stood in front of the camera, but the people he shot between the 1950s and the 1980s, in Capri, Acapulco and St. Moritz, settled the question of what one wore in the better hotels. They rarely wore anything loud. They wore acetate cut for the face, in tortoise, dark green or honey. The frame disappeared into the look. That disappearance is the whole point.
The lineage in Berenford
We do not copy these frames. We have studied the geometry that made them work, in the years of cellulose acetate, and we build new pieces in that line. The Gatsby Vintage Turtle softens the Riviera brow for a modern face. The Sofia answers the cat-eye in a tighter, contemporary scale. The Le Mans carries the racing tint in an Italian-made acetate. Each one is cut from Mazzucchelli acetate, hinged with hand-riveted OBE, fitted with Zeiss lenses, and made as a numbered Limited Edition of 100. To see the full range, visit the Icons.
Cinema always knew what sunglasses were really for: not the eyes, but the character. We design accordingly.