I own no more genuine nor no more dated an artifact than these frames. I wore them during high school, college, and for a few years afterward. They were mighty conventional, but no more than I. In retrospect, I can't say that they enhanced my manly beauty. The glasses made me, like all my contemporaries, look rather like an owl. For me, the design was camouflage. I was trying to be invisible, but if I had to be seen, I wanted to look as much like everyone else as possible. The frames speak to the moment — bland, ordinary, ugly.
But a few years later, during that period in the 60s and early 70s when there were the bombings on the CCNY campus, anti-war marches and riots, and constant social upheaval, I went rimless:
These were frames that I inherited from my father, so my new presentation was part an anti-establishment statement, part paternal homage.
However, rimless glasses were not a good choice for a new father with three active grabby young children. They required far too much repair and attention, and so were always in and out of the shop. Eventually I was forced to switch to glasses that were less political but much sturdier — titanium, in fact, which is where I have remained for several decades, resisting design fads such as huge, tiny, aviator and spangled.
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