Shutter glasses, also known as Venetian blinders, were made for Kanye West by French eyewear supremo Alain Mikli. Kanye West brought them to the fore again, after a period of popularity in the 1980s, in his video Stronger. Why am I writing about them now, five years later? You'll see...
The first example I found of them being worn was in Simple Minds' 1982 video Glittering Prize below...
You'll see that the original 1980s frame above – image from my review of Moss Lipow's excellent book Eyewear and courtesy of Taschen – and the gold one in the Simple Minds video had only a narrow frame at the temples and is quite different to the Stronger aviator-shaped white pair worn by the Kanye West .
Indeed there's a company called Shutter Shades who churns them out in every colour.
And Mykita collaborated with Romain Kremer for this version, left, in stainless steel.
But I think, partly because of his amazing blog post on how he did it, my favourite is Ch00ftech Industries who adapted a pair for 2012 New Year's Eve partying...
