Students don 'Hat and Glasses' for new Web site

Travis Kliemann found a pair of baby blue glasses in the corner of his apartment last year. Little did he know, those glasses would be the beginning of a movement around the East Lansing area. A movement that has reached 2,000 people in six months.

If you’ve logged onto Facebook lately, you’ve probably heard of My Hat And Glasses, a project where Kliemann, an accounting junior from Howell, takes photographs of anyone and everyone willing to pose in a pair of teal glasses and a custom-made trucker hat.

He began taking pictures of people wearing the azure accessories, starting with himself, April 24.

“One night out at my friends house, I just started taking pictures of people with a hat that I normally wear,” he said. “In two days I had 400 or 500 pictures of different people, so I decided to make a matching hat from an online store. Within four or five days I put up a Web site.”

The pictures have been taken mostly in the East Lansing area, with others in parts of Michigan and Ohio. Kliemann has plans to take “My Hat And Glasses” worldwide, which he almost set in motion when he traveled to Hong Kong in June. Unfortunately, the international vision was put on hold, as he forgot the glasses at home.

Kliemann has been surprised at how easy it has been to approach people and how positive the response has been. With a goal of 10,000 pictures, he’s one-fifth of the way there.

“It’s like a personal goal, I want to be able to get 10,000 (photos of people with the hat and glasses),” he said. “I want to get famous people to take pictures someday.”

Popular Spartans T.J. Duckett and Goran Suton already have been photographed in the “My Hat and Glasses” gear and celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres and Rob Dyrdek have been contacted through e-mail by Kliemann.

Marketing junior Alex Leveque is one of the first faces who donned Kliemann’s hat and glasses. Leveque was approached at his house the first night Kliemann began taking photos. Leveque said he still checks out the photos on the Web site today.

“He just whips out his camera and he shows everyone the pictures he’s already taken,” he said. “People are like, ‘Oh my God, yeah.’”

Kliemann recently visited Bowling Green State University where he met Nick Eno, another “Hat and Glasses” wearer. Eno said the idea’s uniqueness is what caught his attention.

“It’s pretty funny, no one has really thought of it before,” Eno said.