Kangana Ranaut in Life in a... Metro

“Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai.” So Calcuttans have done the next best thing — captured his style statement. The dark shades that Shah Rukh Khan sported as Don find takers eight months after the film released.

A.D. Khan, retail executive of Lawrence & Mayo, Park Street, has the Rs 6,000 Oakley from Don on display. “The film did a lot for thick sidearms,” he says, “just as Preity Zinta’s thick black plastic frame in Kal Ho Naa Ho boosted another style.”

Now, with Life in a... Metro starring a variety of spectacles and Cheeni Kum giving Amitabh Bachchan a sexy bespectacled look at 64, the industry has an eye on the big screen.

“Kangana Ranaut, Konkona Sensharma and Irrfan Khan are all wearing zero-power spectacles in Metro. A rise in demand for such styles is inevitable,” says Rajesh Bagri, retail head of Himalaya Optical, Gariahat Road branch, who has already checked out the multi-starrer’s eyewear quotient.

Bollywood has been throwing up eyeball-grabbing eyewear ever since Shah Rukh put on those carbon frames in Baazigar. “No Bolly style sold so much overnight. It helped that they cost Rs 300-400,” recalls Bagri.

Other celluloid spectacles include Bobby Deol’s blue mirror lenses in Barsaat, the fancy shades flaunted by Amitabh and Sanjay Dutt in Kaante, the rimless frames Hrithik Roshan sported in the second half of Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai, Bachchan’s Oakley goggles in Ek Ajnabi and his eyewear in KANK.

Even Tollywood plays trendsetter. According to Bodhisatwa Ghosh, proprietor of RC Ghosh Grandsons in Bowbazar and Gariahat, the RayBans sported by Prosenjit are rack regulars — in cheaper non-branded varieties, bearing a price tag of Rs 500-700.