Last spring, Tom Broughton, founder of eyewear brand Cubitts, was asked to comment on a meme that was going viral, that featured a pair of his company’s ‘Plimsoll’ frames. The small, delicate, and slightly round unisex shape had been worn by British actor, Jonathan Bailey, in leaked stills from the 2025 movie, Jurassic World Rebirth – and had been dubbed by the internet as a pair of ‘slutty little glasses’.
“It all just blew up,” remembers Broughton, noting how the brand struggled to deal with the sudden demand for what had become the sexiest specs on the market. A subsequent capsule collection, made in partnership with Bailey’s LGBTQ+ charity the Shameless Fund, sold out almost instantly, too. Thousands of pairs were gone in minutes, and after multiple restocks, “we’re maybe down to our last 15 pairs,” adds Broughton. Nearly the entire run was bought by men.
The extremely-online among you will remember those glasses, and have likely moved on with your lives. However, it seems they weren’t a phenomenon, but a harbinger; a new era of delicate, performatively bookish men’s eyewear is just getting started.
All across pop culture there are cute guys, in even cuter specs. Those same Cubitt’s frames popped up in the cinema again recently, worn by Glen Powell in Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man. And in the new series of The Night Manager, Tom Hiddleston goes all Clark Kent, removing his neat, Mykita Mylon Triton frames when he steps out from behind a desk and into the field, as if they were a plot device in themselves.
Even The Traitors has its own bespectacled hunk in the form of Stephen Libby. He took to Instagram last week to explain how his perfectly circular lunettes are in fact a family heirloom that he fitted with his own prescription.
And then there’s Marty Supreme. Over the past couple of months it has been almost impossible to avoid the coverage of Timothée Chalamet’s titular protagonist, and in almost every image, he’s wearing teeny tiny, rimless glasses, their soft beveled curves offset by the most perpendicular jawline in Hollywood.
Broughton suggests that this burgeoning era of men’s statement eyewear has been coming for some time. “Five years ago, everyone wanted to buy the same ‘Panto’ shape [a flat-topped, rounded frame with a keyhole bridge],” he says. “It played into that whole mid-Century, Gregory Peck thing.”
Glasses are even popping up in fashion itself. On the recent catwalks of Paul Smith and Prada, models wore specs (sunglasses are a common sight, spectacles not so much). This year’s awards season has been awash with tinted lenses – eyewear which sits somewhere between sunglasses and opticals – as an accessory to slick tailoring, most notably on Jacob Elordi and Michael B Jordan at the Golden Globes. In case you aren’t au fait, a standard pair of sunglasses might feature an 85% tint, but these are more like 40%, or even less, so the wearer’s eyeline is readily on show.
Today’s market is “bifurcated” between oversized, almost “cartoonish” acetate frames, and a “super slim, almost-not-there vibe”, Broughton adds, noting that low-key frames are on the wane, and that this new drive for statement eyewear may be down to our collective increase in on-screen time. “Being in a post Covid world with us all still on Zoom calls definitely plays into it,” he says. “People realise that their haircut, makeup and glasses are increasingly important.”
Jonathan Bailey, it turns out, doesn’t even need glasses. In an interview with GQ, he said that he has 20/20 vision and faked an eye test as a kid to get his first pair. And Timothée Chalamet doesn’t need them either (however, director Josh Safdie says he asked him to wear -10 contacts under the +10 spectacles for added ocular authenticity), so why should capable vision serve as a hurdle for style? It isn’t a problem for about 15% of Cubitt’s customers, says Broughton.
I am a spectacles wearer, and have been accused of wearing prescription-less lenses in the past. I can proudly attest that I am in fact shortsighted, but only just. And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy when the optician first told me I was in need of glasses, even if it was just for driving at night and trips to the cinema.
In the same way that even the dopiest sunglasses make you somehow feel (and look) slightly cooler, just by virtue of hiding your eyes, there is something elevating about a pair of spectacles. Aesthetically, they can frame your face, accentuate your eyes, and serve as a kind of finishing touch to an outfit. But the right frames can also make you look more put together, and somehow more … capable.
“A lot of men wear limited jewellery, some men don’t wear a watch,” says stylist Tom O’Dell, “and so sometimes eyewear can either soften a look, add a new dimension or touch of colour to an outfit, or just be something of interest.”
But I almost feel like I need my glasses – a pair of Panto frames by Finlay & Co – as some kind of social crutch. They’ve become little windows I can hide behind when I’m out in the world. And it seems I’m not alone. “An actor I work with said that sometimes, when in the public eye, a pair of tinted glasses acts as a barrier between you and the public,” adds O’Dell. It gives you a little bit of distance, without a full pair of sunglasses.”
O’Dell thinks tinted glasses can lend a look of “gravitas”, whereas Broughton suggests they might just serve as a handy excuse to wear sunglasses inside. Either way, it’s an improvement. I can’t say I’ve ever had to shield myself from the glare of the clamouring masses, but I can understand that desire for a sense of detachment.
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