While meme status may boost the product’s notoriety, it also dooms it to an equally short lifecycle. Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. And just as the hippie revelers in Haight-Ashbury had their heart-shaped sunglasses, the summer months of 2017 have had their own style of eyewear to claim: Oversized oval lenses encased in thick white plastic frames that give their wearers a distinctive mosquito-eyed look. Whatever your style or look is, it always feels better to discover a new trend than to chase an old one. Nowadays, they go by the informal nickname “clout goggles,” after Floridian rapper Denzel Curry donned a pair for a brief video clip.

obscures anything that might even begin to resemble sincerity behind a thin veil of sarcasm, rarely is the word “clout” used in total earnestness. When Gucci belts became the punchline of Twitter comedy, it became impossible to wear one because you genuinely enjoy the design—to everyone else, you just look like you’ve fallen prey to internet humor. The moment Skepta posted a photograph of himself suited up in Craig Green’s collaboration with Moncler, the designers’ collaboration was sentenced to infamy alongside the “Man's Not Hot” meme. Sometimes, when you find a shape of a shoe, or a bag, or a hat, or a pair of sunglasses that you love, you stick with it, even when it’s not on-trend.The irony is that when you actually do have it, you don’t need to say so – everyone already knows it. Officially, prior to the style’s mainstream co-option, they were known as the Archive 1993/Series 6558 by Christian Roth, the luxury eyewear company behind Cobain’s pair. We cover topics that help you make better decisions, be more interesting and improve your quality of life.

Some credit the trend’s foundation to Lil Yachty’s April 2016 interview on CNN, in which he thanks Lil B for turning him on to Bernie Sanders. Every social media influencer, reality TV star, and aspiring singer seems to be completely obsessed with clout. She is happily married without children, which she credits as the reason for her professional success, youthful attitude and solid eight hours of sleep every night. Gucci rode the wave, releasing a series of memes as an advertising campaign and cementing its popularity with millennial consumers.

Let’s take a journey all the way back to June 2017, when a YouTuber named Live Vlone posted this video that seemed to coin the term “Clout Goggles,” which gives the wearer mystical powers. Long after Audrey, a decade after Kurt, and ten years before rappers co-opted the trend, there was one other famous fellow who sported the look: Johnny Depp, as Willy Wonka in 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While rappers may be flexing clout goggles in all sincerity, it’s impossible to ignore that clout goggles have quickly become meme fodder at best. First employed by Chicago-based journalist Mike Royko in the 1960s to describe the influence wielded by powerful figures in business and politics, "clout" has now trickled down to be possessed by the everyman, denoting one’s influence on his or her surrounding (and often online) community. The resurfacing of clout goggles could be metaphoric for hip-hop and rock’s symbiotic relationship, but to analyze it as such seems like a reach at this point.