These Bob Dylan Sunglasses Dazzle in ‘A Complete Unknown’

Sunglasses were a constant for Bob Dylan in real life and in the film.
Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet ride on a motorcycle in A Complete Unknown, a 2024 film about the life of Bob Dylan. Both actors are wearing sunglasses.
Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet star in A Complete Unknown. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

If there’s anything that A Complete Unknown makes clear about Bob Dylan, it’s that the legendary musician takes privacy seriously. Starring Timothée Chalamet, the Oscar-nominated biopic presents Dylan’s ascendance from a Midwesterner recently arrived in New York City to one of the most important songwriters of his generation. Chalamet wears a pair of eye-catching sunglasses through much of the movie — an apt metaphor for the privacy Dylan desired and true to life, too.

According to an interview with the film’s costume designer, Arianne Phillips, in Who What Wear, the shades sported by the actor are by Bausch & Lomb, the original owner of the Ray-Ban brand (listen to the whole episode of The Who What Wear Podcast). Although the exact frames worn in the movie are, well, unknown, they’re quite similar to the Caribbean frames made by Ray-Ban in the 1960s, which was indeed an era of revolution in eyewear.

Caribbeans have slightly sleeker rims than classic Wayfarers, and two screw details, as opposed to a single horizontal one. On the podcast, Phillips cites Dylan’s fondness for Aviators back then — he evidently loved his Ray-Bans and was regularly photographed wearing Caribbeans.

On the press tour for A Complete Unknown, Chalamet has been playing with accessories of all kinds. Scarves appear again and again in red-carpet outfits, and he lately introduced a mini denim Chanel bag into the rotation.

On the eyewear front, he’s left the Ray-Bans for Dylan, opting for Chanel sunglasses at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and, at a recent photo-call in Rome, funky Prada shades — specifically the PR B02s — that have yet to be released to the public. We’ll have to wait and see if Chalamet takes the opportunity to pull a fashion stunt or two when he is the host and musical guest of the January 25th episode of Saturday Night Live.


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