Big movie revival in 1974.
But then why were monocles ever used?
Half the cost of spectacles?
I knew someone would mention that. Then there’s this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG3PnQ3tgzY
davidm:
To visit jail, to pay luxury tax, to ride the Short Line, or on chance occasions.
They seem to have originated as a fashion accessory based on the 18th-century quizzing glass, which was a hand-held single lens on a handle (the double-lens equivalent was the lorgnette).
Sure, if you needed constant vision in correction in both eyes you’d wear spectacles. For just getting a better look at something, though, monocles were more portable as well as more chic.
For a certain limited group of people, that is. Note that monocles were always almost exclusively an upper-class male accessory. It’s not like optical-lens wearers in all walks of life were likely to be wearing monocles. For the vast majority of people, any practical advantages and disadvantages of the monocle would be secondary to its gender/class/status implications.
Morning Dress. But those are cutaway coats – swallow tail coats are for evening dress.
Also, non upper-class people were just much less likely to be doing things where they needed the optical correction, like reading or doing close-up work. If you’re mucking out the stable, harvesting the fields, or opening the door to the master’s carriage, you probably don’t need a monocle.
I read once (I forget where), that lesbians in 1920s-30s England would wear them, as a way to signal others.
Well, Wiki agrees with you, although I’m not sure it was so much a covert lesbian code as a defiant flouting of feminine convention. Monocles are very elegant but I wouldn’t call them unobtrusive in appearance.
They’re about to make a comeback among fashion-conscious women.
Und die straight-Frauen in Deutschland also.