Shades, glasses and sunglasses | Vintage Sunglasses

Shades: Cool Sunglasses with continuous glasses

Although we could have assigned the vintage sunglasses with only one continuous lens to our category of vintage sports glasses, we have created a separate category for these special designer glasses.

In fact, the shades, often also called shields, have their origin in sport. This spectacle shape, which does not consist of two sun-protecting glasses as usual, but rather just one continuous lens, was developed especially for skiing. The complete covering of the face enables the athletes a so-called panorama view. In addition, sunglasses in this design protect against wind like a screen, from which the term “shields” derives. In addition, the oversized lens covering the face often have a polarising effect to avoid reflections.

Carrera as pioneer for continuous designer glasses

Over time, numerous fashion designers recognised the potential of these shields glasses, although they were actually only ski sunglasses.

Since the Carrera sunglasses brand has also developed from sports sunglasses to fashion sunglasses, as can be read in detail in our shop, it is not surprising that Carrera developed the first shades sunglasses with a certain lifestyle philosophy for wearing outside of sports facilities.

The Porsche Design sunglasses model 5620, which was produced at the end of the 1970s in cooperation with Carrera, made ski glasses a coveted fashion accessory thanks to a prominent wearer: in 1981 Yoko Ono wore the now legendary 5620 Porsche Design by Carrera sunglasses on the cover of “Rolling Stone” magazine.

Almost overnight, all over the world Porsche Design’s sports sunglasses became sunglasses for fashion lovers, who associated them with a certain image.

Shades - a coveted fashion accessory

Motivated by the sales figures for the Porsche Carrera 5620 sunglasses, in the mid-1980s other designers also opted for the eyewear shape with only one lens. Some models looked very similar to Yoko Ono’s sunglasses, like the sunglasses model 5703 from Boeing or the Alpina Goldwing sunglasses. Other shields creations were based only on the concept of the continuous lens; like the crazy vintage Cazal sunglasses 856, 857 and 858 or the Ray-Ban Wings by Bausch&Lomb. Other manufacturers even managed to combine the sporty designs with a certain elegance. Among them were the Christian Dior 2501, the Dunhill 6102 and the Boeing 5708 sunglasses.

Alpina even turned the shields concept into a completely independent collection: the “Talking Glasses” series. The “Talking Glasses” collection from 1989 exclusively contains shields sunglasses, which all embody an individual motto.

Today the motifs of the Alpina “Talking Glasses” series, such as “California Dreaming”, “New York City”, “Pink Panther”, “Glasnost”, “Black Friday”, “Time Is Tight”, “Human Dancing”, “Time Piece” and “Broken Heart”, are coveted collector’s sunglasses.

In general, it can be said that all old vintage shades models are very popular and are often sought after. There are many reasons for this. Regardless of the cool designs, the shields glasses are real eye-catchers and both women’s and men's sunglasses at the same time. It must also be said that the shades models were produced in very small quantities at that time - in comparison to other sunglasses designs - because in the 80s and 90s sunglasses were sold almost exclusively in optical stores. Since shades are the only sunglasses that cannot be optically glazed, opticians at the time had little interest in offering this shape of glasses in their shops.

This has resulted in a relatively scarce supply of these truly exceptional vintage sunglasses to this day. The shades are by far the smallest category of glasses that we have on offer.

Take a look while we still have some of these cool unique glasses in stock!