What involves thoughts once you consider sports activities sunglasses? Perhaps it’s rec spec goggles or large, mirrored biking sun shades. Whereas these glasses are high-quality for motion, they’re not precisely what you’d name fashionable.
Warby Parker is trying to change that with the launch of Warby Parker Sport, a set of efficiency sun shades beginning at $195.
“I’m actually happy with the place we ended up the place these are glasses which have all the nice operate of nice sports activities glasses, however one thing the place you’re not going to look again in 10 years and suppose, why was I carrying this loopy defend on my face?” Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal tells Quick Firm.
The light-weight Italian-made frames had been designed to hug the face, permitting them to remain on whereas lively and defend the eyes from UV publicity. That presents a problem, nevertheless, since a excessive base curve on glasses can distort the optics. To most the curve whereas conserving the optical high quality excessive, Warby Parker cuts its personal lenses itself at its in-house optical labs outdoors Las Vegas and Syracuse, New York.
“You typically see style-driven sport eyewear that has operate and optics as an afterthought, otherwise you see super-functional merchandise which might be, I might say, rather less wearable, and each of those choices are additionally overpriced,” Blumenthal says. “We wished to mix what we do finest, which is timeless design coupled with nice optics and performance at an accessible value level.”
The sun shades include an possibility of one in all three kinds of lenses, every designed for various situations. That issues within the efficiency sun shades class, the place performance equivalent to diminished polarized gentle makes a distinction when out on reflective water or snow.
Rosewood lenses are meant for trails and snow with enhanced distinction, whereas brown lenses are meant for area and fishing with enhanced distinction and depth. Grey lens present true coloration and cut back glare, they usually’re designed for water and street. Efficiency lenses will also be added to different non-sport sun shades frames.
The design course of began from a spot of type and useful wants, and the frames, that are all new kinds, are constructed from hand-painted nylon with a soft-touch coating. There are spring hinges within the arms and no-slip nostril pads underneath the nostril bridge. The sun shades are available in jet black, marine trench, mahogany tortoise, or sapwood tortoise, they usually’re accessible on-line and on the model’s retail places.
The Warby Parker Sport launch comes following “a fever pitch” of demand for the product class, Blumenthal says. It additionally comes following an enormous 12 months for the corporate. Warby Parker reached its first full 12 months of constructive internet earnings, bringing in $1.6 million in 2025. It introduced partnerships final 12 months with Google to develop smart glasses and with Target to open a handful of their first joint shop-in-shop locations.
Whereas the eyewear model is wanting so as to add AI tech into its glasses and its glasses right into a suburban buying middle close to you, Warby Parker Sport is all about getting out and touching grass.
