Marlon Brando

"my. Ray-Bans become the glasses of heroes, the American pilots, who parade through the Italian cities liberated from Nazi-fascism in 1945. The fashion of pilot glasses invades postwar America, movie stars turn them into legend. The first is Marlon Brando, who sports Aviators while riding his motorcycle in the 1953 film The Wild One. The list is long, the girls of my generation all fell in love with Tom Cruise, who flaunted teardrop-shaped glasses in Top Gun in 1986, a movie that brought them back into fashion, increasing Ray-Ban's sales by 40%. But it's not just Aviators that become iconic, the Wayfarers with the black plastic frames become immortal after the Blues Brothers. It's not only the actors who turn Ray-Bans into a myth. The most American glasses there could be, as we have seen, become a natural accessory for the President of the United States: from JFK's to Joe Biden's Aviators."

"From Palermo to Milan, wearing Ray-Bans is a status symbol. Young Leonardo, who started out in the 1950s with metal temples for tricolor frames, certainly couldn't afford them when he was wandering the city looking for a steady job. A racing bicycle was his dream, let alone hoping to put on Marlon Brando's sunglasses."