Ray Ban

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Ray-Ban is a manufacturer of sunglasses, founded in 1937 by Bausch & Lomb, on commission of the United States Air Force. In 1999, Bausch & Lomb sold the brand to the Italian Luxottica Group.

Ray-Ban was responsible for creating two of the most imitated sunglass models on the planet. One is the Ray Ban Aviator and the other is the Ray-Ban Wayfarer. The Aviator was created in 1936. The glasses were developed specifically for pilots and were used by the military. In 1937, they were available to the general public. The Wayfarer has been available since 1953 and is reported to be the best-selling style in history. The glasses were especially popular in the 1980s thanks to the movies The Blues Brothers and Risky Business and the television show Miami Vice. The popularity of the film Top Gun led to an increase of sales of forty percent of Ray-Ban Aviators. The 1992 Quentin Tarantino film, Reservoir Dogs, features characters wearing Ray-Bans (most famously in the opening credit sequence which featured the characters in black suits putting on Wayfarer Ray-Bans to George Baker's "Little Green Bag".) Ray-Ban was also featured in the movie Men in Black.