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Comment by mbell | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a sunglass hut part time during college. The _vast_ majority of sunglasses I sold were for fashion, not function. People weren't paying $250 for the lens, they are paying $240 for the style and 'real' D&G logo and $10 for the lens. In my time there I would say the only brands you should buy for performance are Maui-Jim (great lens / polarization) or Oakley (impact safety), everything else is junk lens put into fashion frames, including Ray-Ban, though their glass lens were at least passable. EDIT - I mean amongst the brands they carried, I'm sure there are other good lens manufacturers out there.

What I'm mostly saying is that I don't see this as rent seeking, it's just people willing to spend large amounts of money for fashion.

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Sunglass Hut is owned by Luxottica and sells their products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica Yes they do really produce that many different brands.

> the only brands you should buy for performance are Maui-Jim (great lens / polarization) or Oakley (impact safety)

Sunglass Hut doesn't sell them, but Serengeti makes some great lenses. Maui Jim might even not make lenses that are both photochromic and polarized, but Serengeti does.

Serengeti with amber lenses are my goto sunglasses for driving since about 2 years ago. I used to wear nothing but Ray Bans but the dark tint inhibits overall visibility slightly where the Serengeti's seem to augment it, while both cut out glare like they should.

are prescription lenses not priced along the lines of the fashion lines?

It is just the frames, the lenses cost additional.

I don't know as much about that side of things but as I recall Luxottica didn't make the prescription lens, they were ordered to spec from a third party. They sold and manufactured the frames and did the fitting work (which does some times require significant work on the lens like reshaping or drilling holes). This was ~10 years ago though so that may have changed.

Luxottica recently merged with Essilor the biggest prescription lens conglomerate so now they are possibly truly integrated and unstoppable.

They merged with... Essilor, I think, so they do lenses as well now.

At the same time if I walk into a sunglass hut thinking that it is a neutral marketplace where many brands compete for my purchase across the dimensions of fashion AND price I am being deceived. sunglass hut and most of the brands inside of a sunglass hut are owned by the same company which is not competing with itself but instead acting as a dominant firm using it's price-setting power to increase how much I'm going to be shelling out when looking for a pair of sunglasses.

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