In Top Gun (1986), Tom Cruise wears Ray-Ban’s Aviators as part of Maverick’s flight uniform. The gold frames look entirely at home beside a fighter jet, though the dark lenses also suit a man cheerfully testing his commanding officer’s patience. Six years earlier, The Blues Brothers had made black Wayfarers essential to a very different uniform. Jake and Elwood’s matching suits required matching sunglasses, worn with absolute conviction through increasingly questionable circumstances.
Ray-Ban in movies is as much about character as frame shape. Aviators can suggest military authority or a volatile bowling enthusiast; a heavy browline can belong to a feared columnist or a charming television detective. Away from the screen, celebrities wearing Ray-Bans give the same designs a more personal history, from Robert Redford in mirrored Aviators to Johnny Marr in black Wayfarers. The clothes change, and the associations accumulate.
Ray-Ban in Movies & Pop Culture
Aviators on Screen & Off
Long before Maverick, General Douglas MacArthur wore aviators with a peaked cap and corncob pipe. The broad lenses and fine metal frame were as recognizable as the rest of his uniform, giving his expression a certain official reserve. Hollywood inherited that association with command, then put it on characters with very different ideas about following orders.
Robert Redford takes his Aviators into town, wearing mirrored lenses with a suit and striped shirt. The combination has the appeal of a man dressed for business who might have other plans. A tie keeps things respectable, while the reflective lenses add a flash of vanity. Sunglasses are allowed to be a little vain, particularly when the rest of the outfit is this restrained.
With Sean Penn and Madonna, aviators become part of a more private-looking moment. Penn wears a black jacket over a white T-shirt, his arm around Madonna’s shoulders. The thin frames leave the jacket and tousled hair to supply most of the attitude. For two of the most watched people of the 1980s, a white tee and sunglasses could still do the job.
John Goodman takes the military associations in a more combustible direction as Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski (1998). The utility vest and combat boots suggest a man permanently prepared for an emergency, including one of his own making. His yellow-tinted Ray-Bans suit that outlook. The production glasses were customized Shooter-style frames, with the broad lenses leaving Walter’s stare in full view. He brings an impressive amount of equipment to a bowling outing.
Wayfarers in Film & Music
Black Wayfarers are practically a uniform requirement for Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers (1980). With matching suits and black hats, Jake and Elwood look dressed for an engagement whose dress code they have taken very seriously. The glasses keep their expressions suitably deadpan through everything that follows. The clothes are funny because the men remain so committed to them.
Johnny Marr gives Wayfarers a less formal afternoon, reclining beside Morrissey in jeans and knitwear. The thick black frames make sense with the Smiths guitarist’s mix of ordinary clothes and rock-star self-possession. They also sharpen up a pose that is otherwise almost horizontal. Of the different types of sunglasses, Wayfarers have a particular knack for making a sweater and jeans look like someone’s signature.
Clubmasters & the Browline Tradition
The heavy browline has a sterner screen history. In Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker wears his glasses with a dark suit and the expectation that everyone at the table will listen. The upper rim gives his gaze extra severity, especially beside Tony Curtis’s anxious publicist. Ray-Ban introduced the Clubmaster in 1986, revisiting a design language already well acquainted with men who liked to have the last word.
Bruce Willis makes browline sunglasses look considerably more sociable in Moonlighting. As David Addison, he wears them with a gray suit and loosened tie, looking dressed for work but open to distraction. The combination of a heavier brow and fine lower rims gives the glasses definition while keeping the face visible. It suits a leading man whose smile is usually part of the sales pitch.
The suits in Reservoir Dogs (1992) suggest that someone has issued wardrobe instructions. The sunglasses allow a little personal preference, with different shapes across the group and Clubmasters associated with Tim Roth’s Mr. Orange. Black jackets and narrow ties give the men a shared identity, while the frames help distinguish them. Together, they turn a walk down the street into an entrance, an effect that has tempted plenty of men with a wedding party to organize.
