Sophia? Is That You Behind the Shades?

By RUTH LA FERLA

POOLSIDE at the Lincoln Tower apartments just outside Chicago last weekend: women in their 70's and 80's basked on plastic loungers, their faces half masked by sunglasses the size and shape of small television screens. Most were purchased 30 years ago and bear extinct labels like Anne Klein for Riviera. These days their style-obsessed daughters and granddaughters could be forgiven for wanting to snatch them away. But as it turns out, there is no need.

Contemporary variations of vintage movie-star shades are ubiquitous this season, as common as sugar cones and almost as easy to come by. The eyewear equivalent of bling, they compete for status with the fashionably oversize handbags toted by the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie and come in more styles than Baskin-Robbins has flavors. Already a West Coast badge of chic, they have emerged all across the country as summer's most sought-after fashion accessory.

An informal survey of stores in New York last week turned up wide-temple aviator frames by Stella McCartney, headlight-size wire rims by Giorgio Armani, scaled-up green wrap frames with matching lenses from Gucci and embossed tortoiseshell models from Bottega Veneta, to say nothing of a proliferation of wraparound visor styles that resemble the dark goggles offered as eye protection to laser surgery patients.

According to James Spina, the editor of 20/20, an eyewear trade monthly, oversize frames now account for 20 percent of all sunglasses sales. Mr. Spina added that those styles have most likely contributed to a surge in overall sales of sunglasses this year, which have increased by nearly 10 percent for the period through March.

Prices vary widely, from $7 for squarish tinted models sold at H&M to $3,500 for monster-size red, white and blue vintage spectacles available through Cutler & Gross. Twenty dollars will fetch dramatic black-rimmed eyewear by Isaac Mizrahi for Target; $160 will buy saucer-size versions from Dita, the Los Angeles company that makes Supa Dupas, the fashion insignia of tastemakers like Mary-Kate Olsen and style bait for postadolescents eager to emulate Ms. Olsen's affectless, just-out-of rehab look.

Curiously, a taste for shades that make the wearer look like an alien life-form required no push from marketers. Instead it derived its momentum from the apparently spontaneous endorsement of Hollywood stars like Angelina Jolie, Jessica Simpson and of course the Olsen twins, all of whom routinely appear in magazines like In Style and Star flaunting frames that seem made to measure for Hollywood egos.

It is fitting, perhaps, that outlandish frames originated in the heyday of Sophia Loren and Anouk Aimée, whose Fellini-esque black shades became her fashion signature, and Jacqueline Onassis, who ducked the paparazzi in supersize glasses as she island-hopped along the Aegean. Then, too, celebrity culture drove their popularity.

"You can wear them and feel, 'I am fabulous,' " said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York, which has experienced a run on diva-scale glasses by Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, Oliver Peoples and Prada. "It's 'I'm a celebrity and you're not going to see where I'm looking.' "

Typical is Pia Grisslich, a 24-year-old psychology student, who peered over her Prada glasses at Cafe Gitane on Mott Street in NoLIta last week just long enough to confide: "I had to have them. They make you feel all shiny and glamorous." Besides, as she knew, her black resin frames lent her already small features a gamine Audrey Hepburn look.

Others choose large frames to minimize prominent features. Manuel Santos, a 23-year-old fashion designer, dotes on his mock tortoiseshell Marc Jacobs shades. "I have a big face," he explained, "and I need to cover it up." Besides, "big frames are very old-school glam," he added. "People like Monica Vitti and even Bianca Jagger used to wear really big glasses."

So attached are some people to their larger-than-life spectacles that they style themselves around them. One, Nicole Gagne, a jewelry designer, strolled in NoLIta last week wearing crème brûlée-tinted glasses that were perfectly keyed to her caramel cardigan, blue and beige Marc Jacobs skirt and tobacco-colored Birkenstocks. "Every day I dress to match my frames," said Ms. Gagne, who owns pale ones for days when she is feeling subdued and an orange pair to wear as a Day-Glo counterpoint to black.

The pair she had on that day were a near ringer for the Dita Supa Dupa, the reigning queen of big shades. The Supa Dupa is the brainchild of Jeff Solorio and John Juniper, two Los Angeles-based fashion photographers who designed the style and several others last year on a hunch that, on the West Coast at least, shades would become the new handbags, as pivotal a fashion statement as a Balenciaga lariat tote.

"For the past five or six months - since the Olsen girls picked them up - they've been the hottest frame we have," Mr. Juniper said. The privately owned company does not release sales figures, but its glasses are among the most coveted models at Barneys, Fred Segal in Los Angeles and DDC Lab in the meatpacking district of Manhattan. Since March, he said, "we have had trouble keeping them in stock."

Jaye Hersh, the owner of Intuition, a Los Angeles outpost of hip, reported a waiting list for Supa Dupas. "People are calling every day," she said. "They just have to have them."

Paradoxically the Olsens, who put supersize frames on the fashion map, may soon be moving on, rendering the glasses obsolete, at least in the minds of early fashion adopters. Retailers, though, are counting on their staying power.

Will big glasses be over? "Not anytime soon," snapped Belle Nguyen, a buyer for 80spurple.com, an online vendor, which does a robust business selling brands like Dita and Dior. "People are loving theses shades because they make you look hoboish in a rich way," she said. "As trends go, this one is just getting started."