Shutter glasses, also known as Venetian blinders, were made for Kanye West by French eyewear supremo Alain Mikli. Kanye West brought them to the fore again, after a period of popularity in the 1980s, in his video Stronger. Why am I writing about them now, five years later? You'll see...
The first example I found of them being worn was in Simple Minds' 1982 video Glittering Prize below...
You'll see that the original 1980s frame above – image from my review of Moss Lipow's excellent book Eyewear and courtesy of Taschen – and the gold one in the Simple Minds video had only a narrow frame at the temples and is quite different to the Stronger aviator-shaped white pair worn by the Kanye West .
Indeed there's a company called Shutter Shades who churns them out in every colour.
And Mykita collaborated with Romain Kremer for this version, left, in stainless steel.
But I think, partly because of his amazing blog post on how he did it, my favourite is Ch00ftech Industries who adapted a pair for 2012 New Year's Eve partying...
I came together tom roche new years eve
ReplyDeletewith what I’d say was the strongest promotional team in SF to bring out Steve
Aoki to a crowd of thousands of people. One of best party is fancy dress party guests
wear masks to conceal their identities. Guests at a costume party or a fancy
dress party wear costumes. These parties are sometimes associated with New
Year’s events, such as dance and drinking Singles dance party and mixer. San
Francisco is the forum for all type of party and especially for New Year’s
party.