Monocle Fad Revived

1902

Single Eyeglass Habit is Coming In Again In London

A London Express representative has discovered the interesting fact that the monocle is slowly coming back again. Not since the days of Major Pendennis. and the Iron Duke, whom the old soldier tried to copy, has there been anything like the vogue which is now setting in in single eyeglasses.

Some who claim to know trace the origin of the new fashion to the fact that officers serving in South Africa have found them very serviceable; others put them down to a revival at Oxford and Cambridge.

At the establishment of Messrs. Ross of Bond street, who for years have supplied the elite with monocles, the reporter was informed that the new craze has been in progress for some time. It is an undoubted fact that there is a growing demand for a particular type of eyeglass manufactured in America which is peculiarly adapted to sensitive eyesight.

To a question whether the wearing of the single eyeglass was not so much a necessity as a foppish fad the reporter received the reply that of 100 men wearing monocles there would be perhaps about twenty wearing plain non-magnifying glasses — window pane — purely for ornament. The rest would require the use of the monocle to help the defective sight of one or the other eye.