Governor's Poor Boys: Classic Ivy League Tortoise Shell Frames

On the campuses of Ivy League colleges in the 1930s and 40s, legacy students, scions of the Eastern Establishment, adopted honey amber eyewear with a straightened top, P3 shaped rounded rims and extended hinges. Such frames were typically horn rims and meshed well with the classy leisure style that included tweed sport coats, Oxford shirts and wingtips. They were not sold in local stores -- you had to go to small boutiques in Newport or the Hamptons to find them. Rich-wannabees drove themselves crazy trying to snag a pair so they too could look as if their father and grandfather were alumni. With sarcasm, they named the frame style, "Poor Boys", and the moniker stuck.

During the late sixties and much of the seventies, the Poor Boys dropped off the radar screen. Then a few trend-setting political candidates and business leaders brought them back in a modified, custom made smaller eye size in rich, deep honey-toned tortoise shell. When the size of the P3 rim shape was reduced, these classy frames suddenly became the Ivy style and preppy standard. Focusers developed Governor's Poor Boys based on these frames.

If you really want to look as if your father's driver just dropped you off to private school in the family's Bentley, order your vintage GPBs in prescription sunglasses. Select the tint color of your choice (G-15 green is the "trad" choice). Or consider ordering two frames: one in honey amber and the other in dark hue tortoise, to perfect your Ivy style look for every occasion.