Eyewear Icons: Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise. You can love him, you can hate him, you can judge him for jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch while interviewing on national television. There’s one thing you have got to admit: The man is an eyewear guru.
From Jerry Maguire to Mission Impossible, he has set trends and resuscitated styles in the eye wear world again and again.
The Ray-Ban® Wayfarer™ Resurfaces
For instance, the Wayfarer™ glasses. Once popular through the 1950s and 1960s, giving the public a change from the default metallic frames they had always known.
Stephen Bayley, the design critic for the Wayfarer™, boldly said,
“The distinctive trapezoidal frame spoke a non-verbal language that hinted at unstable dangerousness…”
However, when the Ray-Ban’s® popular style suffered a lull in popularity in the 1970s; all it took was Cruise sporting a pair of Wayfarers™ in 1983’s Risky Business. Over 360,000 pairs sold just that year. It marked the beginning of a fashion movement!
Keeping Fly with Ray-Ban® Aviators
Exhibit B: Aviators. Aviators have been around since the 1930s. Originally created by Ray-Ban® for WWII pilots to protect their eyes while in flight, the aviator sunglasses have definitely withheld the fashion test of time. In fact, originally, they were produced for and only available to the military. It wasn’t until a year after being strictly exclusive to aviation pilots, did Ray-Ban® make aviators on sale to the public.
1930 was a long time ago. And as time passed, demand decreased from its initial spike and finally hit plateau. Though they never completely went out of style (they’re considered a classic look for a reason), aviator sunglasses did not hit another spike until the mid-1980s.
Ray-Ban® sales jumped 40 percent on Aviators™ after Cruise’s famous 1986 blockbuster, Top Gun.
Granted, these movies were products of the 1980s, Cruise is still considered an eyewear icon. Not only does he choose timeless eye wear pieces on the silver screen (and pretty much any style he touches turns to eye wear gold), but he has been known to sport various stylish shades in his personal life as well.
So the next time you are heading to Eyeglass World for your new pair of shades, just walk in and say, “I’ll have what Tom’s having.” The man (Cruise) won’t steer you wrong. He may not be a great house guest (carries the tendency to jump up and down on expensive furniture) but he has always had great taste in fashionable eye wear.
Eyeglass World. Glasses that make the difference. Prices that make it possible.