Tattoo Sunglasses Another Part of American Trend
Monday, August 18 2008 | Comments (0)
The Koi Fish Design
Goggles and Glasses, an Arkansas-based company that began on e-bay in 2004, announced that it will sell a line of vintage tattoo-art-inspired sunglasses. The sunglasses will be in several designs in several different frame colors. The designs feature one of several vintage tattoo motifs including a koi fish, a panther, a dragon, an eagle, or a skull. These designs can then be further customized with different frame colors and background choices, giving a nice range to Goggles and Glasses' new product that is lacking in other tattoo-art-inspired consumer products.
Gary Richardson, CEO of Goggles and Glasses, said this about his new line, “I was the first one to put a pair on and when I did, I instantly felt 10 years younger, sexier, and I even noticed my hair started growing back!” But the youth-renewing properties of the glasses aside, these kinds of design choices are becoming increasingly common.
In fact, this fusion of ink and eye wear comes in the wake of several new product lines featuring tattoo art. T-mobile and Motorola have a line of tattoo-esque cell phones, several members of reality TV’s Miami Ink began Roothless & Toothless, a tattoo-art-inspired line of children’s clothing, and Ami James, another member of TLC’s Miami Ink, even designed do-not-disturb door hangers for a Chicago hotel.
The Eagle Design
But why the recent rise in interest for tattoo related products? A number of interrelated factors are at work it seems. At first it would appear that the popularity of shows like Miami ink and L.A. Ink have thrust tattoos into the limelight in recent years. But allowing for these shows’ popularity are developments in the art of tattooing itself. Artists say that technological advances in both tattoo guns and the ink itself have led to better and more interesting art, and it’s this new more personalized and high-art brand of tattoos that have made the Ink shows so powerful in the first place.
This trend of personalization is not relegated to tattoos, however; shows like American Chopper offer customers and viewers a chance to see personalized art from conception to completion. And in this context it seems tattoos are simply emblematic of a larger trend in American Culture. And it begs the question: what’s next? But whatever kinds of other personalized products emerge, in this era of user generated content, we can be sure they will be as creative and original as their iconic, inky predecessors.
Printable version Email this articles Comments (0) Post Comment
