Brooks Brothers and Ray-Ban - The Ties that Bind

Avoiding the Glare - Ray-Ban Sunglasses for Brooks Brothers

How to combine three of your favourite things: trad Americana, Italian craft and your winsome face? It's obvious. With the new Brooks Brothers Ray-Ban sunglasses.

A contender for collaboration of the year, the refreshed Ray-Ban Wayfarer and Aviator styles have a concealed yellow (below) or burgundy (above) Brooks Brothers striped club tie design on the inside of the arms - the sort of tie Anglo-Americans call 'repp'.

Brooks Brothers are famous for their repp stripe ties, fashioned after British regimental or club ties. As you'll know, they reversed the British left-shoulder to right side convention to run the stripes American-style from right-shoulder to left side. A convention that divides us to this day.

The tie design may not be enough of a substitute for the real thing to get you into a club in Pall Mall, but adds a little formality to the course of sunglass wearing. No bad thing that touch of subversive conservatism.

Do I Need a Pair?

I'll be out on operations soon, a critical mission: Vienna for cake and Budapest for bathing. I'm also between Ray-Bans at the moment. Quod erat demonstrandum. I've always been a Wayfarers man, always solidly and dependably constructed, so I think I need (almost as if my life depended on it) to get hold of a pair of the Wayfarers in the brown tortoiseshell for my trip. I'll let you know how I get on.

Life Behind a Lens

The Ray-Ban frames and lenses are made in Italy. Both styles have the green tinged G-15 lens. B-15 lenses have a brown tinge.

The Ray-Ban brand is now part of the Italian Luxotica Group, but the company has been careful to maintain the integrity of the original classic American designs of Bausch & Lomb. The Aviator pilot sunglasses were originally developed as anti-glare goggles in the 30s for the US military.

Brooks Brothers, 
150 Regent Street, 
London W1