Browline glasses
style of eyeglass frames
Browline glasses are a style of eyeglass frames whose "bold" upper part holding the lenses resembles eyebrows framing the eyes. They were very popular during the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the US. The glasses were first manufactured by Shuron Ltd. in 1947 under the "Ronsir" brand and quickly emulated by various other manufacturers. The design was one of the most common style of eyeglasses throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s before it was surpassed in popularity by solid plastic styles. Browlines enjoyed a renaissance as sunglasses in the 1980s before returning to popularity in the 2010s, with the rise of retro style and the hipster subculture.
Description
Browline glasses are constructed with the upper portion of the frame thicker than the lower, simulating eyebrows, or otherwise drawing attention to the wearer's natural brow line.
The most common means of construction is for the upper portion of the frame (the "brows" or "caps") and temples to be made of plastic, with the remainder of the frame (the bridge and eyewires, or "chassis") to be made of metal. The chassis inserts into the brows and is held in place by way of a series of screws. For a period in the 1960s, numerous models emerged in which the brows were constructed from aluminium; following the style's resurgence in the 2000s, browlines made wholly out of one type of metal with less pronounced brow portions became popular.
Monobrowlines
Monobrowlines are a variant of browlines in which the bridge is contiguous with the caps, creating a solid, unbroken line across the top of the frame.
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