It is not often that the superstar celebrities of music, sport, fashion and royalty all agree on one look, but summer 2024 is the exception. Wraparound sports sunglasses have been centre stage at Glastonbury, the Olympics and everywhere in between.
More than 2,000 Olympic athletes wore Oakley sunglasses at this year’s Games. Some were chosen to wear the brand’s latest innovations, such as the revolutionary QNTM Kato frames, which, true to brand, have been designed to fit as close to the face as possible and block out the discomfort of peripheral light: the wraparound style.
Team GB middle-distance runner Josh Kerr was wearing his signature Oakley Sphaeras when he won silver last week, while American shot putter Raven Saunders wore Nike Zeus to compete.
Many spectators also sported wraparound shades, including Princess Anne – long considered a fashion icon by stylists – in her favourite Adidas Adizero Tempos.
Though the wraparound style, which is supposed to have been invented by Oakley in the 1980s, has not been in fashion since the 1990s, many other brands have their own versions.
Frames known as sunshields – exaggerated, oversized wraparounds – are also popular this summer, and have been worn by the singers Rihanna, Katy Perry and SZA.
Alexa Chung recently posted a selfie of herself rocking a pair of Marks & Spencer men’s wraparounds on Instagram Stories. She called them “rave shades”, though to M&S, they are “sport sunglasses”.
M&S reports that customer demand for its sporty shades is up 73% on last year, while at Selfridges, shoppers’ searches for Oakley sunglasses have increased 140% in the last three months.
“[The trend] has been building for a few years, but with the Olympics, suddenly everything’s coming together,” said Katie Devlin, fashion forecaster at trends intelligence agency Stylus.
Over the last few years, Oakley has pulled off some high profile collaborations with, for example, Palace skatewear, Junya Watanabe menswear and Brain Dead streetwear.
But, said Devlin: “The brand didn’t become cool because of those collaborations. The collaborations came about because people were suddenly interested in Oakley. Being uncool is what’s so appealing about them.”
The trend “began in irony”, according to Devlin: “In youth culture, actor Adam Sandler has become this huge style icon, so co-opting lame ‘dad’ clothing – whether it’s wraparound sunglasses or Salomon shoes – has become a thing.
“But if you’re still not buying the dad shade trend, and you think performance wraparounds will always look unspeakably ugly, well, that might just be you showing your age.” She added: “There’s an element to this of not caring what people think of you,” which she said particularly appeals to younger people.”
She also pointed out that the difference in attitude is similar to when an uncle asks, incredulously, if you had actually paid good money to buy your ripped jeans: “It’s that idea of, if people don’t get it, maybe you’re doing something right. It’s cool to people who get it.”
Demna Gvasalia, the provocative Georgian designer who co-founded the fashion label Vetements and is creative director of Balenciaga, was an early adopter of the wraparound shades. He loves parody and his recent designs include a Lay’s potato chips handbag – a £1,600 version of the Ikea bag – as well as a towel skirt.
In 2018, there was a Vetements-Oakley collaboration and, two years ago, Gvasalia got his many celebrity muses, including Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell and Bella Hadid, wearing Balenciaga’s Oakley-inspired sci-fi shades.
According to Natalie Hartley, the fashion stylist and founder of vintage clothing shop Chillie London, the fashionable way to wear wraparounds is to style them with “dad clothes – baggy jorts [jean shorts], white socks, brogues, a Ralph [Lauren] shirt with a crop top underneath and a baseball cap. It’s preppy cool, it’s masculine sexy – and definitely a bit ‘dad’.”
For Olympian Kerr, there is a different appeal. He said his trademark Oakleys make him stand out on the track. “When the glasses go on, it’s game time,” he said on BBC Sport.
