As the calendar turned from December 2017 to January 2018, eyewear industry experts began predicting that tiny sunglasses would be the hottest product this spring and summer. It turns out they were half right. Everyone was after a pair during the early weeks of spring, but the trend is now crashing and burning before our very eyes.
What everybody assumed would overtake the eyewear industry through the end of August now looks to be already on its death bed. A lot of people have purchased tiny sunglasses only to regret their purchases in record time. So what’s going on? Why did such a hot trend seem to flame out before it ever really got going?
Table of Contents
The Ups and Downs of Fashion
A good place to start, if you are hoping to gain an understanding of the tiny sunglasses trend, is the psychology that drives the ups and downs of fashion. According to a great article published by Cosmopolitan in mid-June, fashion trends are often driven by extremes. That seems to be the case with tiny sunglasses.
History shows that when fashion goes to any one extreme, it usually swings back in the opposite direction to the same degree. The desire for tiny sunglasses should not be a surprise given how big sunglasses had gotten in previous years. Some of the biggest sunglasses we have seen in decades were all the rage in 2017. So the pendulum swung back in 2018. Instead of going extremely large, it was expected that people would want extremely small.
Do you remember what started the tiny sunglasses trend? If you believe fashion experts, it was Kanye West’s suggestion to wife Kim Kardashian that she shed her oversized sunglasses in favor of a pair of tiny shades. Kendall Jenner got on board and the rest is history.
They Don’t Actually Work
Our culture generally accepts that tiny sunglasses are all about fashion. Yet fashion only goes so far when you’re dealing with bright sunshine bearing down your face. The reality of tiny sunglasses is that they just don’t work as adequate eye protection. In light of that, Utah-based Olympic Eyewear says that the tiny sunglasses trend would have probably done better had designers waited until late autumn to introduce their new models for winter wear versus what’s trending this summer.
That seems logical. When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, sunglasses are about eye protection first and foremost. Customers looking for maximum UV protection will quickly discover that tiny sunglasses don’t really keep the eyes adequately covered, thus negating most of the benefits of buying sunglasses to begin with.
It Might Be Political, Too
Another possibility offered by Cosmopolitan is, believe it or not, politics. A lot of people associate tiny sunglasses with the 1960s counterculture. Tiny sunglasses may be part of the politics of rebellion to some people. While no one has proven this theory to be true, let’s just say it is.
A lot of us are politically exhausted at this point. We are doing our best to avoid the news because we’re tired of the constant partisan bickering. So it could be that people don’t want their sunglasses or other fashion accessories to speak at all to their political leanings. They would rather go with something nice and generic just to avoid the conflict.
Regardless of what’s causing it, there is little doubt that the tiny sunglasses trend is flaming out. People have stopped buying them just as quickly as they started a few months back. So now we move onto whatever trend is set to replace tiny.