The Rake

SOLAR POWER

Source: Bronze leather sunglasses, Cutler and Gross; denim blue cotton shirt and silver collar bar, both Edward Sexton for The Rake*; navy and white striped silk tie, Orazio Luciano for The Rake*; French blue wool trousers, Chester Barrie for The Rake*.

Sunglasses have always been, and will always be, achingly cool — a phrase I tend to avoid in written form but that I will employ with joyful abandon when writing on this subject. It’s fair to assume that the first time an Inuit tribesman fashioned a slitted mask from walrus ivory to protect against snow blindness two millennia ago, his companions looked aghast at each other and said, “Is Adlartok not one groovy motherfucker?”

And everyone since — from Emperor Nero watching gladiator fights through gemstones, to 12th-century Chinese judges wearing quartz over their eyes to give off expressionless dispassion, to 1930s movie stars using them to combat the bright lights of movie sets and camera flashes — has had

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