Bespectacled popularity ebbs, flows with latest national figures, celebrities

By Bryan McKenzie

Published: October 5, 2008

For the first time since Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon B. Johnson back in 1964, a major party candidate on the presidential ticket is making a spectacle with spectacles.

While Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin is either loved or hated politically, her eyeglasses seem to be getting rave reviews.

Palin’s designer frames have sold out since her arrival on the presidential political playing field and similar frames are attracting attention.

“It happens whenever someone becomes popular; other people notice what they’re wearing and want the same thing,” said Jon Bright, of The Spectacle Shop on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. “The distributor for the designer of her frames — Kazuo Kawasaki — sent out an e-mail saying that the frames are back-ordered. We don’t carry that designer, but we’ve seen increased interest in similar designs.”

The interest likely has less to do with politics than public exposure, Bright said. He noted that the movies “Risky Business,” “The Blues Brothers” and “Top Gun” helped revive the fortunes of Ray-Ban, makers of eyeglass frames and sunglasses, in recent decades.

“Before those movies, Ray-Ban sold about 7,000 Wayfarer sunglasses worldwide,” he said. “After Tom Cruise wore them and the Blues Brothers wore them, Ray-Ban sold about 700,000.”

Palin’s eyewear, which runs from $350 for the frames to $700 with coated, treated and multi-focal lenses, is out of the ordinary in presidential campaigns.

Most candidates have avoided being seen in their eyeglasses and few presidents, with the exception of the elder President Bush, have been photographed for official purposes wearing spectacles.

That doesn’t mean the presidents haven’t needed corrective lenses, however. According to former advisers, Ronald Reagan was so nearsighted that he was excluded from military combat service in World War II.

He wore contact lenses and would take one out to read his speech while leaving the other in to see the audience.

Harry S. Truman was the last president who wore glasses on a day-to-day basis and had his official portrait taken while wearing them. The last candidate to be seen in posters and in public wearing glasses on a regular basis ran for office 44 years ago.

“Glasses have been a supposed problem since Barry Goldwater in ’64,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “His consultants thought the big black frames [he wore] interfered with the ability of voters to concentrate on what he was saying. So in Goldwater’s TV ads, he spoke first with glasses, then he removed them on-camera while finishing his message.”

Apparently they didn’t get the message: Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who was often seen in glasses but campaigned without them, trounced the conservative Republican candidate.

Sabato, who is on the campaign trail visiting battleground states for the presidential election, said he’s heard much talk about Palin’s glasses.

“There has been a lot of comment about Palin’s stylish eyewear. Maybe it will encourage more [politicians] to go ahead and wear their glasses,” Sabato said. “I am always amazed at the things people focus on.”

Joe DiGirolamo, of Primary Eyecare Associates in Charlottesville, thinks Palin’s glasses reflect a growing trend of eyewear as fashion statement. Just as politicians choose suits and ties that most flatter them, so are people choosing their frames.

“I don’t think there’s a stigma attached to wearing glasses. I think it’s just that there are so many different styles available now that people can choose what they really like, what fits them and what defines them,” DiGirolamo said. “Thirty years ago there were maybe nine frame styles to choose from and further back in the 1960s there were maybe three or four.”

Now hundreds of styles and variations on the themes are available, reflecting lifestyles from college-studious to radical biker.

“Nearly every designer is getting involved and even companies like Nike, Mercedes-Benz and Harley-Davidson are commissioning lines of eyewear,” DiGirolamo said. “You have designers like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren.”

Many people buy several different frames and lenses for different occasions, changing glasses for the gym, the opera, work and lounging about the house. Not everyone, however, looks good in every frame, Bright said.

“Those are the perfect frames for [Palin’s] face,” he said. “If they were fit on someone else, they may not have worked so well.”