Named after Bruce Lee, who was born in the year of the dragon and took the name Little Dragon, the Dragon is our full aviator in dark tortoiseshell with warm amber lenses. What it is built from, how it is finished, and the man behind the name. Reading time: 3'
The Dragon, part of our Strada collection. A full aviator in dark tortoiseshell with a heavy brow and a warm amber lens, the frame that was on every face that mattered in the early seventies. Big on purpose. The kind of sunglasses you wear when you want people to notice you are wearing them.
The frame
Dark tortoiseshell cellulose acetate, cut from cured sheet. The brow runs straight and heavy across the top, 9mm at the border, with two rivets set into each side. A shallow base curve keeps the front flat across the face, so the frame reads as one line from temple to temple.
The lenses are a solid warm amber. Amber pulls the contrast up and takes the blue out of the light, so a grey morning looks like four in the afternoon and the edge of every kerb comes forward. It is a lighter tint, category 2, which is why you can leave them on from breakfast to the last light without the world going dark. CR-39, full UV400. Five-barrel stainless steel hinges. Tumbled and polished by hand.
31 grams. 57-17-142.
The name
Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco on 27 November 1940, in the year of the dragon and in the hour of the dragon. When he started making films as a boy in Hong Kong he took the screen name Lee Siu-lung: Lee the Little Dragon. He kept it for the rest of his life. In 1958, before anyone had seen him throw a punch on camera, he won the Hong Kong cha-cha championship.
Bruce Lee and his Mercedes 350 SL. Hong Kong, early seventies.
He went back to Hong Kong in 1971 and made four films in two years: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, The Way of the Dragon, which he wrote and directed himself, and Enter the Dragon, made with Hollywood money and shot in Hong Kong in the spring of 1973. Between takes he dressed like nobody else in the colony. Suits with lapels out to here, wide ties, a red Mercedes 350 SL in the car park, and a pair of big aviators with amber lenses that covered half his face. The kicks made him famous. The clothes are why the pictures still look good.
On the bonnet. Hong Kong, early seventies.
Back in Los Angeles he had wanted a Porsche. He drove a 911S Targa at a dealership, told his friend Steve McQueen he was going to buy one, and McQueen offered to take him for a ride first. He took him up into the hills above Mulholland and drove like a man trying to prove a point, and Lee spent the ride on the floor of the car shouting that he would kill him. McQueen's idea of a test drive.
An amber lens does to a street what those years did to Bruce Lee: it warms it up and sharpens it at the same time. Put the Dragon on in flat light and the colours come back. Put it on at six in the evening and the evening gets longer.
Hold the frame against the light and the tortoiseshell opens up: brown on the surface, amber underneath. The pattern is cut from the sheet, so the one on your pair is yours and nobody else's.
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STRADA: Dragon Dark tortoiseshell. Warm amber. 31 grams. |
If you want to know how the acetate is made, or what each lens colour does to the light, both stories are in The Archive.
