Why do women love bug eye sunglasses?

[lovely bones]

Sorry it's kinda long, but I've always wondered about this...

By SARAH SANDS, Daily Mail

Paris Hilton's style is more stick insect than Jackie O

The bug eye sunglasses are the ONLY shades to be seen in this summer. So what's the attraction of looking like a giant fly? SARAH SANDS finds out:


There is currently a paradox that Western women are happy to show off their bodies while covering their faces. The gigantic sunglasses which swallow features under a weird frontal burqa are on every High Street. Why have women voluntarily turned themselves into cartoon bugs or diving instructors?

Lately, the glasses have got bigger as the faces have got smaller. I have seen ten-year-old girls who are nothing more than hair and face masks. What happened to those dainty, rose-tinted, round-rimmed glasses everyone was wearing until recently? I still have mine. But now I also have a colossal pair of shades.

It is rather like being inside a limo. I could be behaving like Charlotte Church behind them and no one would ever know. The glossy magazines are full of the monstrous carbuncles. A model in a Chanel advertisement throws back her (mostly covered) head with carefree laughter. Oh, so she thinks her glasses are funny, does she?

A blonde wearing Yves Saint Laurent hangs her head, with the weight of her sunglasses or possibly in mourning. The Ralph Lauren model has her face covered in black and white super-shades and is carrying a string bag. Perhaps for collecting crustaceans from the seabed.

We are perfectly used to seeing models in crazy couture - lampshades on their heads, bustles from their backsides - without for a moment thinking that we have to copy them.

But super-sized glasses are being worn on real beaches this year by real women. TV presenter Anne Robinson puts her hand up when I ask if she is wearing the giant glasses.

"I have a pair which, I am embarrassed to say, are larger than anyone's I have seen," she admits. "To complete the folly, I added prescription lenses. However, each time I put them on, I look in the mirror and see Norma Desmond and take them off again.

"My courage failed me as recently as yesterday. I think I might auction them in aid of an ageing film star charity. Or towards a nursing home for elderly television presenters. Then again, I could just send them to Esther Rantzen."

Cookery writer Nigella Lawson has a modest pair and stresses that these were pre-fad. "I can't do ones that make one bug-eyed," she says. "I have never been swayed by fashion and have stuck with my Jackie Os - even when they are, unfortunately, in vogue."

Who started the craze?
The question is, as ever, cause and symptoms: who started the super-sized craze and why? Fashion historians argue bitterly about the original perpetrator. Jodie Nellist, life stylist on Closer magazine, says Lionel Richie's stick-thin adopted daughter, Nicole, was the first to wear them.

"Because she's super skinny, they looked even bigger. It was ridiculous," she says. "Then Paris Hilton wore them. But Nicole was first."

What was Nicole's purpose? Was it some kind of protest? "She is in LA," says Nellist. "You always want to be different there. Then they started appearing on the catwalks."

Camilla Wright, the zeitgeist-conscious editor of Popbitch, the gossip website, disputes this version of history. "They date back at least three summers, that is when I bought mine and I certainly wasn't the first (ouch!). I don't think it was Nicole Richie. It was much more likely to have been Kate Moss.

"I guess people wear them because they instantly convey sophistication - the Jackie O look - even if you are an ex-heroin addict and seemingly anorexic like Richie.

"I stopped wearing mine because you don't want to be associated with people like Nicole Richie. Also because Marks & Spencer started selling them. So the trend is on its way out."

Fiona McIntosh, editor of Grazia, favours another route. "It all started with Dior's enormous 'fly eyes' sunglasses, championed by American rap stars, and then swiftly adopted by Victoria Beckham," she says.

"Those fabulous shots of her on the slopes in a Chanel leather ski-suit and glasses bigger than her face spawned hundreds of High Street rip-offs.

"The skinnier the star, the bigger the glasses. Super-skinny American teen queens Richie and Lindsay Lohan are the champions of the supersize-me sunglasses.

"The coolest giant sunglasses of the summer are by Oliver Peoples, Alexander McQueen, Emporio Armani and YSL."

Some are born to fashion and some stumble across it. My own bug eyes are Oliver Peoples. I thought they were the biggest glasses in the shop until the assistant told me conspiratorially that she has some even larger ones in her drawer.

Weird distortions
The weird, distorting proportions are certainly part of the glamour. I quite like having a huge black face on top of a short body.

The correct shape, however, is unquestionably the stick insect. Hence the phrase 'fly eyes'. What could the psychology of gigantic glasses possibly be?
The American online culture magazine Americana has published an editorial on the subject: "If eyes are the windows to the soul, then sunglasses block entrance.

"They speak to us simultaneously and sometimes even paradoxically of wild rebellion, cool indifference, wealth and power, glamour and freedom. As such, they represent many of the characteristics that Americans admire."

I think it is fair to say that, as with most of high fashion, what makes sense to women is baffling to men. "What is the deal with sunglasses these days?" asks blogger Tom Sherman on his website. "Every girl I see walks around with huge sunglasses extending from mid-forehead to halfway down her nose.

"There is a perfectly good reason why big sunglasses, which cover large portions of women's faces, are fashionable: they cover large portions of women's faces."

I think Sherman is a little too cynical. The joy of the burqa sunglasses is that you really don't know what a woman looks like. It is a lottery. Every woman has the unexpected joy of modesty and men have the occasional good luck.
Stephen Bayley, the aesthete, reminds me sunglasses acquired their status through Hollywood.

"The movie business developed in California because that quality of light is best suited to filming. The same West Coast brilliance required flimsy East Coast urbanites and pale, imported Europeans to seek optical protection, a defensive measure soon found to carry certain advantages of style.

"By some curious trick, sunglasses make people look more interesting. Sunglasses mediate between assertiveness and reticence, between concealment and display. This is classic erotic territory."
But there is a worse fate for giant sunglasses than M&S and that is footballers' wives. The bug-eyed display in Germany this week by the wives and girlfriends of England's World Cup footballers says less about concealment and display - and more about shopping.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...79&in_a_source=

[Chalet]

Jackie had a wide face and wide set eyes. I think that's why they suited her. But take a small faced woman like Nicole Richie or one of those Olsen girls and it's just out of proportion.

My only requirement for sunglasses is that they cover my eyebrows. It's also good to have very dark lenses that will also cover the sides of your eyes.

[DitaPage*]

My grandma has the biggest sunglasses I've ever seen and we used to laugh at her; now I want her to give them all to me, lol. I have a few pairs of oversized; I like how they look for now but I'm getting sick of them. I'm not really a sunglasses person either.

I HATE the white rimmed ones though; mine are light or dark brown, or black. SOOOOOOO many girls walk around in the Paris Hilton style ones.

Some celebrities wear them to cover more of their face; sometimes I wonder why other people walk around in them.

[Tenaj]

I have a black pair. Only wore them once, never will wear them again after I pulled up to our house and my boyfriend looked out the window and pissed himself laughing. It wasn't really the reaction I was hoping for.

[sputnik]

i love big sunglasses. but then i also have cheekbones and big eyes and eyebrows so they look good on me, they look ridiculous on people with narrow faces.

and they've come in and out of fashion since forever, they're nothing new.

also, not all big sunglasses are nice. i hate the old lady ones nicole richie wears, then ones with huge lenses and skinny legs coming out of the bottom of the frames.

[PurpleHaze]

don't like them at all! esp when women with tiny faces wear them covering 3/4 of their face. that's definitely a trend i am not going to follow.

[ediebrooks]

Chalet, great minds think alike! I was also thinking maybe women wanted to look like Jackie Kennedy Onassis. I have to admit I've thought about getting some big sunglasses, but I'm afraid I'd end up looking like Yoko Ono.

[A*O]

You have to have a wide'ish face to get away with big/bug sunnies. They look ridiculous on small/narrow heads. I have a pair for when I can't be arsed to put on any makeup and they are also useful for hangovers.

[AyanEva]

I think large sunglasses are ridiculous regardless of the decade. Then again, I don't wear any sunglasses because I'm way too cheap to get prescription lenses for them and I try to avoid being outside when it's hot and sunny. I'm definitely a winter person.


AyanEva

[DitaPage*]

Originally Posted by sputnik

i love big sunglasses. but then i also have cheekbones and big eyes and eyebrows so they look good on me, they look ridiculous on people with narrow faces.

I have high cheekbones and its funny, when I wear my BIG sunglasses, its hard to smile, because it moves the sunglasses up, lol. Its weird. But its because the glasses sit on my cheekbones because they're oversized.

[Barbara]

Why do women love bug eye sunglasses?

I can't stand them.
I'd love not to wear any sunglasses ever, but my eyes are way too sensitive

[Chalet]

The thing is...if they really do have small faces, do they really think they look attractive? I dunno, somehow I get a self esteem issue vibe as in they really want to cover up the ugliness they feel inside. Sorry for the pop psychology, trendiness aside, something isn't right.

[DeChayz]

One of the ugliest trends ever

[thrpschr]

I need wide sunglasses to look allright, my cheekbones are the widest part of my face, so small ones look like shit on me... Don't like these huge, round ones, though, I prefer wide but normal to slim ones. Broad sides are good, though - gives some sun protection from the side, too.

But mostly I wear a hat instead. More fun, more stylish and infinitely more practical, as sun protection goes, especially considering that I prefer my glasses to contact lenses.

[Belfae]

This is one of the more ridiculous trends. I think they look awful on everyone. I didn't even like them on Jackie O. The stick figure brigade aren't doing themselves any favors. Now they look more freakish than ever.