Living: Status in the Shading Game

A billion dollars in sales make sunglasses the essential accessory

Coool. That's right. "Capital C, triple o, l. Coool." That's how Robert Richard, 18, spells the statement his shades make as he saunters down Los Angeles' haute-funky Melrose Avenue. Perched on noses, plunked on heads and dangled on "leashes," sunglasses are making an endless number and variety of fashion statements this summer. Still an obligatory part of the rockstar, sport-star, and any would-be-star uniform, sunglasses are an essential accessory for almost everyone else. Sure, some people may use them just to keep out the glare. But not Louis Peralta, 19, of Galveston, Texas: "What can I say? Everybody has them." Explains Robert Marc, owner of a Manhattan sunglasses store: "It's what others see first. Here's something that sits in the middle of your face, and here's a fairly inexpensive way to change your whole look." Sunglasses have found their place in the sun, and shade.

Last year some 85 million of them were bought in the U.S. for about $900 million. This year (no sunnier than last) the market will grow by 25%, adding up to more than a billion dollars. Never before has there been such a phantasmagoria of shapes, sizes, colors and prices: python, polka-dotted and zebra frames, champagne, vermilion and espresso-colored lenses, asymmetric cat's-eyes and jewelry-bedizened sun helmets that cost thousands of dollars. If price is the object, the glittering Optica shop in Beverly Hills has a pair for $35,000. Foster Grant, the largest U.S. manufacturer of popularly priced sunglasses, offers more than 100 styles. Bausch & Lomb, the patriarch of quality shade makers, has at least 200 styles to select from. And people are not shy about choosing. Amanda Brown Olmstead, head of an advertising agency in Atlanta, has nine pairs, which she stores with her jewelry: "I change my glasses just as I change my earrings. What I wear depends on my mood that day and the colors I wear."

This summer, what is considered "fashion forward" looks backward. The name of the frame game is "retro," and the chicest styles recall the '50s and early '60s. The hip grandfather of the look is the Ray-Ban Wayfarer. The dark, clunky, squarish shades with a street-tough elegance evoke the likes of Buddy Holly and James Dean, and are as much a talisman of the '50s as white socks and penny loafers. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd wore them in the movie The Blues Brothers, and in Terms of Endearment Jack Nicholson seemed to have Wayfarers grafted onto his face. They became a mass pop phenomenon when Tom Cruise hid himself behind a pair in Risky Business in 1983. As a result, says Paul Brickman, the movie's writerdirector, kids are buying attitude, a "street-bad kind of look." In 1981 Bausch & Lomb produced 18,000 Wayfarers. This year the company expects to sell 600,000. Notes Gai Gherardi, co-owner of Los Angeles' posh 1.a. Eyeworks: "When a kid comes in here, he's buying that '50s mystique, that uniform. If he wants to be cool, he'll buy a Wayfarer."