Cool Shades: The History and Meaning of Sunglasses
Ebook
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Overview
Cool Shades provides the first in-depth exploration of the enduring appeal of sunglasses in visual culture, both historically and today.
Ubiquitous in fashion, advertising, film and graphic design, sunglasses are the ultimate signifier of ‘cool’ in mass culture; a powerful attribute pervading much fashion and pop cultural imagery which has received little scholarly attention until now.
Accessible and highly engaging, this book offers an original history of how sunglasses became a fashion accessory in the early twentieth century, and addresses the complex variety of meanings they have the power to articulate, through associations with vision, light, glamour, darkness, fashion, speed and technology in the context of modernity.
Cool Shades will be of great interest to students of fashion, design, visual and material culture, cultural studies and sociology, as well as general readers fascinated by this iconic fashion staple.
The first scholarly examination of the prominence of sunglasses in contemporary visual culture, this study explores their power as global signifiers and excavates the slippery concept of ’cool’.
Features a broad range of case studies, from the dandy to hip hop, Andy Warhol to Lady Gaga
Structured thematically and chronologically, exploring the appeal of sunglasses in mass culture
The first study of its kind, accessibly written with students and scholars in mind
1. Introduction
2. Sunglasses and Modernity: Why do Modern Eyes Need Shading?
3. Sunglasses and Speed
4. Sunglasses and the Hi-tech Body
5. From Sunlight to Fashbulbs: Sunglasses, Success, Celebrity and Glamour
6. Sunglasses and the Other – Race, Gender, the Blind and the Outlaw
7. The Spread of Outsider Cool: 1950s – Present
8. Sunglasses and the Absence of Meaning
9. Conclusion
10. Timeline (1750 to 1960s)
Bibliography
Index
Brown delivers a fascinating explication of an iconic fashion accoutrement: sunglasses. She discusses how they have served as a popular cultural signifier, particularly since the 1920s, and explains their purportedly ‘cool’ quality … This short but insightful volume explores the influence of urban developments, the early turn to goggles and then eventually to Ray-Ban aviators, and the ultimate evolution of ‘modern cool.’ … According to Brown, sunglasses also were linked with African Americans, the femme fatale, white hipsters, the Beats, and late modernity … Likening shades to Breton’s top hat and Robinson’s bowler, Brown offers that they stand as ‘the ultimate symbol of the age.’ A thoroughly intriguing account. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.
An original contribution to the field ... The book gives an effective discussion of the various meanings of sunglasses as signifiers and draws some interesting examples from film and photography.
- Title: Cool Shades: The History and Meaning of Sunglasses
- Author: Vanessa Brown
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 192
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780857854643, 9780857854452, 0857854453, 085785464X
- Resource ID: LLS:9780857854643
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T10:06:26Z
Vanessa Brown is a Senior Lecturer responsible for Design Culture and Context in the School of Art and Design (Department of Fashion, Knit and Textiles) at Nottingham Trent University, UK.