It’s believed that the first “sunglasses”—ivory goggles with a small slit for each eye—were invented by the Inuit people around the 13th century to shield their eyes from the sun’s glare off the snow. In the 18th century, the Venetians followed suit, using shaded Murano glass lenses to protect themselves from the sunlight reflecting off the water in their city’s canals. Aviators were invented in the 1930s when the U.S. Army Air Corps brought up the need for anti-glare shades for its pilots. Mountain climbers and explorers required specs too, as did, in time, millions of ordinary beachgoers. At no point in this centuries-long progression did anyone advocate for wearing sunglasses at night.

Cut to 1960s New York City, in some smoke-filled, subterranean club in Greenwich Village. Midcentury

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