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The One-Eyed Man Is King: How did the monocle become a symbol of wealth? (2012)
Eustace Tilley, the dandyish mascot of The New Yorker, telegraphs his estimable class status with a number of chic-yet-dignified sartorial choices, a...
The monocle can be helpful in reading small print and before the advent of modern refractive-error testing it was thought to be capable of correcting myopia, but sporting one as a general part of one’s attire was always something of a fashionable affectation. Though the exact origins of the monocle are unclear, fashion historian Richard Corson sets their general appearance around the turn of the 19 th century in Great Britain, with quick adoption and further development in Germany. According to a 1950 article from Optical Journal, from the beginning the single lens carried with it “an air of conscious elegance,” making it ripe for ridicule: “[O]ne had the feeling the wearer was being a trifle foolish, an attitude which resulted to some extent from the fact that monocles frequently did not fit and kept dropping out of place.”
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