Ray-Ban, Risky Business

Risky Business I used to love that episode of Saved by the Bell when Zack, Slater and Screech are home alone and they bust out some Risky Business-style moves wearing socks and using brooms as guitars. Anyway. Back to Business. At the time, the Wayfarer sunglasses Tom Cruise modeled in that movie were pretty much biting the dust. Annual sales were only about 18,000. After Tom Cruise wore them in the movie (and on the cover of the movie) in 1983, sales skyrocketed to 360,000. By 1989, Ray-Ban had sold more than four million of the Wayfarer model. A bit of trivia for you: Audrey Hepburn wore Wayfarers in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Don Johnson wore them in Miami Vice, Bruce Willis wore them in Moonlighting and ol’ Tom Cruise tried them on again for Top Gun. Why such the gap between Audrey and the 80’s revival? Well, in 1982, Ray-Ban inked a contract with a product placement company: $50,000 per year to put Ray-Bans in movies and television