Cinema shaped the modern idea of sunglasses. Not optometry, not aviation: the screen. From the 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 racing frame became shorthand for composure at speed.
- The 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 Hollywood came to the Côte d'Azur, and the films shot along its corniche roads 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
In the racing films and paddock photographs of the late 1960s and early 1970s, sunglasses became part of the driver's kit: the look of a professional who stays calm at speed. It is a frame that belongs to the pit lane and the open road. At Berenford that spirit takes the shape of an aviator, the Le Mans, at the heart of the Le Mans world.
The feminine cat-eye
Through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the cat-eye became the screen's shorthand for feminine glamour, a code so durable that versions of it have run through fashion ever since. It lifts the face and finishes a look without a word. The Sofia is its descendant.
The society photograph
The society photographers of the 1950s to the 1970s, working in Capri, Acapulco and St. Moritz, settled the question of what one wore in the better hotels. Their subjects 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, 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 contemporary line. The Le Mans answers the racing aviator, with light blue, light green or gold mirror lenses. Each one is cut from Mazzucchelli acetate, fitted with German OBE hinges and Zeiss lenses, and made as a limited edition of 100. The Gatsby and the Sofia belong to The Icons; the full range is in the Collection.
Cinema always knew what sunglasses were really for: not the eyes, but the character. We design accordingly.