Cat eyeglasses

"I passed a shop of an optician and I saw this oil painting of glasses glued onto the face, and I thought 'that is really so ugly!' And then Dorothy Parker was writing verses 'Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses' and I thought 'something better could be done' than just these awful glasses that look like the time of Benjamin Franklin Then I thought, what would be good on a face and I thought of a mask, a Harlequin mask. " Altina Schinasi on Altina The Documentary Have you ever wondered were the iconic upswept cateyeglasses of the first Barbie dolls came from? We have to thank this woman Altina Schinasi. Altina was a a multitalented artist who studied in Paris and who invented in the 30s what were first called harlequins for Altina cut some shapes parting from the venetian masks she was fascinated with in her time in Europe and played with them to see which one was more flattering to the face. As happened to Ruth Handler with Barbie, men in companies like Bausch and Lomb or Rayban laughed in her face at her invention. But Lugene's in Madison Avenue bet on her and asked her the exclusive of the glasses for at least six months. What followed was a Lord & Taylor Annual American Design Award, the good critics of fashion magazines like Vogue and Life and the expansion of the bussiness to the West Coast. In the 40s the trend began to settle arriving to Hollywood and there would be decorations like rhinestones and other elements on the corners of the frame but its popularity sky-rocked in the 50s with Marilyn Monroe wearing them on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1955). We can't forget either our Barbie launched in 1959 and the Holly Golightly Manhattans, the famous glasses Audrey Hepburn worn in her 1961 Breakfast at Tiffanys, designed by Oliver Goldsmith, bigger and with tinted glass, which settled this frame forever. Cat eyeglasses became a fashion accessory and designers got creative with many variations that made the glasses very collectible and they have perdured through time and have gained the fidelity of many of us.