The Best Luxury Eyewear Designs 2024

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” observed the celebrated wit Dorothy Parker. If this was ever true, no one seems to have told the world’s largest luxury brands. The worth of the global luxury eyewear market is calculated at $40.8 billion and will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 4% from 2023 to 2030, according to Cognitive Market Research — putting its expansion comfortably ahead of most other sectors of the luxury market.

LVMH’s eyewear division Thélios is on a major splurge. In November it announced an agreement to acquire Barton Perreira, a renowned luxury eyewear company. Two months earlier it bought up Vuarnet, the 60-year-old French high-end outdoor sunglasses brand. “Vuarnet perfectly blends in the Thélios’ portfolio of LVMH luxury Maisons through its unique brand positioning at the crossroads of outdoors and fashion,” said LVMH. “Thélios aims to restore the brand’s former glory, empowering Vuarnet to further elevate its product quality and push the boundaries of innovation.”

In January Thélios announced that it would be partnering with TAG Heuer to enable the renowned Swiss watchmaker to return to the eyewear sector. Bulgari is the latest luxury brand to hand over design, manufacturing and distribution of its eyewear collections to Thélios. Not to be outdone, Kering Eyewear has recently snapped up Maui Jim, the world’s largest independent sunglasses brand, as well as UNT, a key player in the manufacture of high-precision metal and mechanical components for the luxury eyewear sector.

RM Luxury Limited, a new sustainable luxury eyewear brand, has just announced the launch of Aderiyike sunglasses in Mayfair. According to creative director Aderiyike Makinde, the inspiration for the brand is a desire to “revolutionise the fashion industry by infusing sustainability and longevity.” She says: “Witnessing the detrimental impact of fast fashion, I envisioned a brand that offers stylish, enduring eyewear without compromising on quality or the environment. What makes it special is the fusion of fashion-forward aesthetics with eco-consciousness, offering our audience a chance to express their style sustainably.”

This increasingly bullish market is being matched by bold, confident designs in sunglasses this summer. Yves Saint Laurent’s Amelia pilot range, for instance, has a sharp angular silhouette with metal bars supporting vintage frames.

Cartier has added witty little details such as stylised panthers to its new Panthère de Cartier collection. Gucci has a vintage vibe, with shades of orange, pink and pistachio green, and heavy branding.

Chloé’s collection also features large statement frames. Mindful of concerns about conspicuous consumption in these difficult economic times, the luxury fashion industry generally might be leaning towards more discreet looks with less prominent logos, but eyewear is clearly bucking the trend.

As product knowledge becomes increasingly important for luxury customers, the new Maybach collection, like a growing number of luxury eyewear ranges, puts an emphasis on materials — in this case, wood, natural buffalo horn, fine carbon fibre, leather and titanium among others. With its use of 18ct gold and diamonds, this new collection almost feels like a jewellery range, rather than eyewear.

Alongside his main range of eyewear, designer Tom Davies has just unveiled his Luxury collection, a series of handmade frames featuring precious metals. “The collection has grown and evolved into something special,” he says. “I’ve actually been making frames from natural horn, silver 925 and 18ct gold for more than 10 years but this is my biggest release to date. It’s not something you can easily just launch — we needed to become experts in manufacturing these materials and then we carefully developed the collection and the concept. It’s taken a lot of work but I’m really happy with where it is right now.”

As an eyewear professional, why does Davies think that the luxury eyewear sector is expanding with the big luxury houses now buying up individual brands? “For 30 years big eyewear brands were just licensed products to gigantic eyewear conglomerates,” he explains.

“Then the big brands found they didn’t like two things. Someone was earning more money than they were — and they lost control of their brand positioning. It’s a problem for brands like Gucci when their frames are positioned mid-market. So I guess there’s an element of them wanting to wrest back that control – though that’s easier said than done.”

Mario Ortelli, managing partner of Ortelli & Co, a strategy, mergers and acquisitions advisory company specialising in the luxury goods industry, compares the expansion of eyewear with the way in which luxury houses have moved into beauty over the past few years. “It’s a way of scaling up and reaching more customers,” he says. The lower price point of these accessories compared to clothing and handbags means that more customers can interact with the brand. In some cases, ticket prices for handbags have risen by more than twice the rate of inflation over the past few years. “You might not be able to afford a bag at £3,000 but you can often buy the brand’s glasses at £300 — and the chances are that you’ll use them more often than a bag. Eyewear is very visible, very prominent.”

Ortelli points out that, with gross margins of up to 80%, eyewear is commercially very attractive to luxury groups. There’s another parallel here with the trend among the big luxury groups to develop brand extensions and to move into new sectors by buying other companies rather than partnering with them. “Acquiring eyewear brands and manufacturing, rather than just granting licences, gives luxury groups more control of the product, the distribution and the brand story,” he observes.

Sunglasses aside, high-end optical eyewear is also benefiting from another trend: more of us require glasses these days. Half of the world’s population could be short-sighted by the year 2050, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, an increase of more than a third on the total today.

Spectacles themselves are also increasingly seen as a status symbol. According to a paper published last year by Columbia University, “many studies find that the more education you have, the more likely you are to be myopic” and “high earners are more likely to wear glasses than low earners.”

The big luxury houses are on the lookout for opportunities to expand their collections. “I’m approached every few months about being bought out,” says Davies. He anticipates more acquisitions by the big luxury eyewear brands. “You’re not seeing so many fashion brands launching their own eyewear line, but established eyewear lines are being snapped up by the big fashion houses. I think we’ll see more of that.”

As the large luxury groups identify new sectors and consumers look for new ways to express their individual style, along with the growing need for more of us to wear glasses, this is a sector whose future looks bright.