Horn-rimmed glasses

Horn-rimmed glasses were one of the first styles of eyeglasses to become a popular fashion item, after comedian Harold Lloyd began wearing a round pair in his films.

Michael Caine's first appearance as Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File in 1965 featured his signature look of thick horn-rimmed glasses which made him a style icon of the 1960s.

Lloyd outfitted himself in clothing popular among Americans in the 1910s, completing the ensemble with a pair of round, horn-rimmed glasses that would solidify the character's status as "ordinary."

[1] Explaining his reasons for the glasses, as well as their sartorial advantages, Lloyd said: "They make low-comedy clothes unnecessary, permit enough romantic appeal to catch the feminine eye, usually diverted from comedies, and they hold me down to no particular type or range of story.

[citation needed] Horn-rimmed glasses fell back out of fashion in the 1990s but returned to popularity with the rise of the emo and hipster subcultures in the early 2000s.

Many glasses manufactured during this period tended to imitate popular metal eyeglass styles, with significantly thinner frames and vertically smaller lenses.