Geeky glasses, descended from military-issued glasses and horn-rimmed glasses popularized by Harold Lloyd and Buddy Holly, were initially embraced by geeks as an unconventional accessory. They have since become a fashion statement, with slimmer and sleeker designs. True geek chic pairs them with simple clothing and sometimes even tape on the nose piece.
Geeky glasses are so much more than fancy black plastic vision-enhancing glasses. This type of glasses is an incremental accessory for the trendy geek fashion, also known as geek chic. Geek chic is similar to nerd chic, another popular fashion style for savvy social criminals. Simply put, geek or nerd glasses are thick, dark plastic glasses with no nose pads. Geeky glasses are the descendants of the clunky glasses once issued to United States military personnel and horn-rimmed glasses.
Horn-rimmed glasses are so named because they were originally constructed of horn or tortoiseshell material. Harold Lloyd, the comic clown of silent films of the early 1920s, popularized the style of horn-rimmed glasses. College students across the US emulated Lloyd’s cheesy and clumsy but amiable style, even patching broken frames with duct tape or glue as Lloyd did. The style eventually waned, but experienced a revival in the 1950s when musician Buddy Holly donned the glasses.
Government Use Glasses (GI) were thick, household glasses prescribed to government and military personnel during basic training. Service members satirically named the unattractive glasses “contraceptive glasses” (BCG). This was the result of his uncanny ability to repel members of the opposite sex.
Geeks initially embraced thick, chunky geeky glasses as an inexpensive, low-maintenance antisocial accessory for corrective vision and for their deliberately unconventional counterculture. Before the rise of personal electronics and technology in popular culture, geeks were considered social misfits, extremely intelligent but obsessive and erratic. In return, the geeks rejected fashion’s thirst for populism, refusing to conform to whimsical conventional tastes. Geeks were noted for their simple, comfortable clothing and signature geeky glasses that were low-maintenance. Geeky glasses came full circle when popular culture embraced them and turned them into fashion accessories.
In the 1990s, geek chic flowed into popular culture as computer technology and the Internet blossomed for the average, everyday user. Geeky glasses are no longer the big, oversized plastic horn-rimmed glasses of Harold Lloyd and Buddy Holly, but have been made slimmer and sleeker. Traditional geek glasses retain the thick plastic body and chunky rectangular shape. True geek chic style pairs the bulky geek glasses with a T-shirt, blue jeans, and simple sneakers. Taping on the nose piece adds additional geeky flair.
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