The Easy Escape of Tinted Sunglasses

THE ACTOR-FILMMAKER and people’s champion of relaxed-fit street style, Jonah Hill, is loyal to a pair of black-rimmed frames colored by a rose-red tint, and another filled out with the faintest ice-blue. Earlier this year, when Harry Styles unleashed his artfully horny music video for "Watermelon Sugar," the heartthrob winked at the camera behind a pair of taffy blue and strawberry red glasses, his piercing eyes still visible beneath the highly saturated hues. The always-fashionable movie star and renaissance man Jeff Goldblum has been wearing tinted lenses for decades. New-wave pop stars like Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish have embraced the look, too, alongside supermodels and Instagram savants like Bella Hadid and Kendal Jenner.
 
I have been thinking about this idea—the link between emotions and colors, and the subconscious pull we feel towards certain shades. Pablo Picasso's first pioneering body of work was known as his Blue Period. Between 1900 and 1904, depressed over the death of a friend, the artist painted bleak monochromatic portraits with a palette of melancholic blues, eerie greens, and downtrodden greys. There is a somber overtone to this work, one that hangs heavy and low like a flimsy tin ceiling sunken from the weight of an overnight snowfall. Then, in 1904, he met Fernande Olivier, a French woman with red hair who quickly became his new muse. Around this time, his paintings developed a warmer and more romantic quality, leveraging cheerful oranges and pinks that bathed his subjects in a warm glow.

I’ve also been thinking about glasses—I’m in the market for a new pair. Sifting through the latest collections it’s clear that tinted lenses, often in eccentric hues both cool and warm, have caught on with the style-forward and chronically chic. Right now feels like a perplexing time for an embrace of playful, colored lenses. Many of us feel stuck in the grip of the pandemic and unmoored by sprawling socio political turmoil. Perhaps this splash of color acts as a salve, a way to change the tone of the world as we peer out our windows and glance at our smartphones.

Presently, the German brand Mykita offers a circular steel frame with lenses the shade of a clear blue summer sky. Loewe, the charming and crafty Spanish label now helmed by designer Jonathan Anderson, recently partnered with a beloved Ibiza boutique on a chunky, art deco-inspired eyewear style that has become a favorite among fashion's inner circle—one standout pair came complete with a honey-hued lens. The Italian luxury brand Bottega Veneta sells glasses with lenses tinted in a neon green shade that rivals Slimer from Ghostbusters. The look has made its way to stateside labels, too. L.A.’s Rhude produced frames so large and thick with lenses so yellow and glamorous that one could imagine Iris Apfel in a pair.

Before the fashion houses and buzzed-about labels embraced this abstruse trend, Moscot, the family-owned NYC company, began selling eyewear in 1899 from a pushcart in Manhattan's historic Lower East Side. (The brand has since upgraded to flagship stores in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Milano, Tokyo, and beyond.) Moscot has been custom tinting lenses for decades, using a variety of handmade, dip-dyeing techniques. Just this year, Moscot started highlighting the color-tint option on the brand's website, signally the look has jumped from niche to sought-after. Customers can choose from 20 unique tints with groovy names ranging from Purple Nurple to Woodstock Orange and Bel Air Blue.

Tinted frames have been around since the 1800s. Initially, green glass lenses were introduced to correct various vision impairments; the hue protected the eyes from bright sunlight and high-energy light. By the turn of the century, driving goggles with tinted glass were worn year-round to shield eyes from dust and debris. (Cars lacked adequate windshields and roofs back then.) By the mid-19th century, various tints were matched with frames for the sole purpose of complementing one's skin and hair colors. During the 1960s and 1970s, the look was embraced by the hippie subculture. Since the turn of the Millenium, colored lenses have remained confined to popular culture's more esoteric circles: avant-garde fashion editors, aging male celebrities, and legendary Britpop rock stars.

Perhaps there is something about this year that drives us towards the look, a way to add playfulness to a functional accessory worn to see things more clearly. Maybe we're just bored from the increased time spent indoors due to the global pandemic. At the very least, the trend feels on a similar wavelength to menswear's embrace of a more idiosyncratic way of dressing, like Jonathan Anderson’s blinged-out chain loafers or Emily Bode’s textiles-turned-bespoke-shirts.

I've found myself lusting after eyeglasses with tinted lenses, particularly a pair from Moscot with the "Limelight" tint, a shade of a seafoam-esque green that recalls the frothy backwash of the beach. It reminds me of home, of growing up by the coast, of the way the Pacific Ocean would beam in the early afternoon on a particularly sunny day. Other colors in the catalog strike a chord, too. In my mind, “Cabernet” recalls the murky glow of the $5 Manhattans I drank in the dimly lit bar on Rivington Street where I spent too many nights in my twenties. But I don’t want to be reminded of cheap drinks. I want the color that reminds me of home and my youth and of simpler times. I want to see the world awash in a soothing, faded turquoise green.

At first, I shrugged it off my desire to own eccentrically tinted glasses as an impulse driven by my own quarantine boredom, but the allure isn't waning like a whim. Each week I spent inside my house, each day that more awful news buzzes on my phone, only seems to intensify the desire. I live alone, and the pandemic is isolating. My family is far away, and my home state of California is on fire. The forthcoming American presidential election looms large over my psyche. I'd like to fall in love like Picasso did, altering my outlook from gloomy to rosy, but that doesn't seem likely—I don't even know how to paint. But tinted lenses are a way of seeing things not as they are but colored precisely to your desire, a means to briefly experience the world in a hue of our choosing, whichever color that may be. ◆