Vintage Eyewear Styles

About Vintage Eyewear Styles

Vintage Eyewear Styles is a free nostalgia trivia quiz with 15 multiple-choice questions with a mix of 12 easy, 3 medium questions. From cat-eye frames to aviator sunglasses, how well do you remember the iconic eyewear of decades past? A typical run takes about 7 minutes, hints are always one tap away, and your streak ticks up the first time you finish a game on a given day.

A few sample questions

1. 1. What women's eyeglass frame style, featuring upswept corners that resembled a feline, was the most popular frame of the 1950s?

   Answer: Cat-eye glasses

   Cat-eye glasses, with their distinctive upswept corners often embellished with rhinestones, were the defining eyewear style for women throughout the 1950s.

2. 2. Which type of sunglasses, originally designed for military pilots in the 1930s, became a fashion icon by the 1960s?

   Answer: Aviator sunglasses

   Aviator sunglasses, designed by Bausch & Lomb for U.S. Army Air Corps pilots, became fashionable for civilians by the 1960s and an enduring style icon.

3. 3. Which Ray-Ban sunglasses style, featuring a distinctive trapezoidal frame, became iconic after appearing in many 1950s and 1960s films?

   Answer: Wayfarer

   Ray-Ban Wayfarers, introduced in 1956, became one of the best-selling sunglasses in history, worn by stars like Audrey Hepburn and James Dean.

4. 4. What thick, dark-framed men's eyeglasses style, popular in the 1950s and 1960s, was notably worn by Buddy Holly?

   Answer: Horn-rimmed glasses

   Horn-rimmed glasses, with their thick dark frames, were a distinctive 1950s men's style. Buddy Holly made them an iconic rock and roll accessory.

5. 5. What style of glasses features a bold upper frame and a thin wire lower rim, popular for men in the 1950s and 1960s?

   Answer: Browline glasses

   Browline glasses, with a bold plastic upper frame (resembling eyebrows) and a thin metal lower rim, were the most popular glasses style of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Things you'll learn along the way

• ✓Jackie Kennedy Onassis was famous for wearing oversized round sunglasses, which became known as 'Jackie O sunglasses' and remain a classic style.
• ✓Small round wire-rimmed glasses, nicknamed 'granny glasses,' became a counterculture fashion statement in the late 1960s, famously worn by John Lennon.
• ✓Rhinestones embedded in the corners and along the brow line of cat-eye frames added glamorous sparkle to 1950s women's glasses.