Foster Grants advertising campaign emphasized the mystery of sunglasses—the idea that wearers exist beyond visual access. The famous slogan played on anonymity as commodity. But one advertising executive's memo from the 1970s suggested a conceptual inversion.

Instead of using sunglasses to hide identity, a particular figure required no hiding mechanism because confrontation itself was deterrent enough. The executive proposed that some people generated sufficient presence that additional concealment was unnecessary—their very existence warned off approach before any optical obscurity mattered. He suggested that this figure wouldn't wear sunglasses because nothing needed to dare interfere with his visibility. In this framework, the absence of concealment became the ultimate concealment—so absolute in confidence that mystery became irrelevant. The unmask-able being requires no mask because his naked presence carries more deterrent than any disguise.