The Clothed Body

The Face and the Gaze
their exaggerated collegiate style at the end of the 1950s. In the same
period, a pair of expensive and well-made dark glasses appeared on
Marcello Mastroianni’s nose in La Dolce Vita, while in a famous Martini
advertisement that humorously cites characters like Mastroianni, Onassis
and Anita Eckberg, recreating the atmosphere of those years between Via
Veneto and Portofino, the characters wear dark glasses, dangerous vehicles
of mystery, betrayal and complicity.
Though invented to satisfy the practical need of protecting our eyes from
the sun’s rays, dark glasses have become a particular kind of fashion item,
hiding or veiling the area around the eyes, and thus modifying salient facial
features, often to the point of making a person unrecognizable. Indeed, the
expression ‘I didn’t recognize you with those glasses on’ is a common one,
and when we meet someone in the street good manners prescribe taking off
our sunglasses so that we can look and be looked at directly. Unless, of
course, we deliberately want to mask our gaze; for example, if we feel
embarrassed or are crying, or simply want to hide our identity. There has
even been a bizarre fashion recently for mirror lenses, not only in the
mountains, where they make sense, but also in the city, the effect of which
is simply to add a vulgar touch to the face.
Since the 1970s sunglasses have been synonymous with the name Ray
Ban, the American company that not only introduced the famous pearshaped
model, but also inaugurated the fashion for sunglasses with a label,
like Lacoste for shirts and Levi’s for jeans.
Despite the introduction of different models to suit different tastes, in the
last decade the Ray Ban constellation has been obfuscated by the avantgarde
models of the new cult sunglasses, Web. Known above all for the
celebrities who wear them, Web glasses effectively represent anti-Ray Bans,
since they experiment with ostensibly ‘poor’ materials and bizarre shapes,
producing a ‘baroque’ effect, whereas Ray Bans represent a more ‘classical’
style. Rough metal, screws sticking out, spirals connecting the lenses;
everything exhibits a subtle wit and playful irony of design that guarantee
an enthusiastic public of affluent, yet non-eccentric buyers.
Apart from these successful name brands, in the context of Italian production
(which has recently broken all sales records) lenses for all tastes
and ages fill the shop windows, and not just the optician’s. Indeed, the
latest fashion is for shops that just sell dark glasses. The most ‘pop’ models
of the moment have big, mask-like lenses with titanium or transparent tube
frames. And the habit of wearing sports glasses (in the shape of swimming
goggles or cyclist’s glasses) is on the increase too: there is even a prototype
with a rear-view mirror for pedestrians at risk in city traffic! In the near
future we will probably witness an advance in the technological function
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