Noun: A pair of sunglasses worn at rave parties.
The origins of the timeless practice of sporting sunnies in a
dark nightclub or pitch-black field is shrouded in mystery, however recieved explanations include; (a) their usefulness in concealing dinner-
plate pupils and/or redness, rolling or foaming of the eyes, and (b) the
trip-friendly apricot hue they bestow upon viewed objects.
Nowadays, raviators are often worn as an assertion that the wearer is pumped full of party drugs, in an ironic reversal of their original role as a facade of sobriety. A T-shirt emblazoned with the sentence "I'M OFF MY FACE
MATE!" would be only marginally more blatant.
Any pair of sunglasses serves as raviators, but the most coveted tend to be particularly outmodish or improbable e.g; those
tragic cycling wraparounds from the 1980s embellished with bad neon / old school
fat plastic reading-glasses missing lenses / red and green cardboard 3D spex / milk
bottle bases held in wicker frames / normal sunglasses with eyes painted on the front / ones that light up or make a noise / seriously rubbish ones belonging to an aged relative / normal sunglasses worn upside-down or many pairs worn jointly. Originality is regarded as a relatively
key aspect, although the tolerant
philosophy behind raving renders its ultimate importance somewhat negligible.
Some swear by
one trusty pair of raviators they've had since the acid house era whilst others buy a new pair in the pound shop prior to every party, savvy to the bad habit raviators have of attaching themselves to complete strangers' faces.
