How Renegade of You

"At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily." - Flannery O'Connor

Wednesday night, Warby Parker Boston. I met Samantha, who having traveled to Boston from New York to host the event, remarked that her friend said she was "a true renegade for the trek." Proof that the night's theme could be dropped as lightly in the form of a joke as it was emblazoned on new season advertisements. RENEGADE. It started in a fractured hallway, wall paint chipped its dusty residue over the cement floor. Two girls dressed in royal blue (matching purposefully to the dimmed LED overhangs?) directing the gradual influx of fellow bloggers to the elevator. Doors eased shut, a mechanical start stirring the otherwise empty elevator shaft. And once we approached our destination, almost as if the doors were finally releasing a breath they'd been holding all this time, a ventilated current wafted through as the doors opened. And there we were. That second floor with WARBY PARKER stenciled cleanly into the glass ahead of us. It was all the direction we needed. The interior was so minimalistic, clean and open, catering only to those most basic necessities: nourishment, hydration, and vision. And, okay, by nourishment I mean miniature cupcakes and cheese and by hydration I mean champagne... but vision is still perfectly justifiable as a necessity.

We were all there to celebrate the launch of Warby Parker's Meridian collection and to learn just what influenced its conception. And so, from the unassuming second floor of a building located in Boston's most ostentatious neighborhood, we mingled the collection's significance and toured the space still so fresh to Boston's radar. By the time I made my way to the far corner of the room where the sunglasses sat in mirrored discretion to the building itself, I had champagne in one hand and a globe trotter's coconut cupcake in the other. The chronological placement of these three items intentional, no doubt. What made these frames so unique? I couldn't help but wonder. To the average eye, they were a classic take on a classic shape--they were Aviators. However, a closer eye could distinguish these sunglasses from a long line of Aviators. Japanese iron-plated titanium formed the frames in polished gold and jet silver, catching the light so fantastically. Like the sandy earth of a beach, shimmering against the sun by day, and glistening to the moon's luminescent glow by night. As I'd be educated later on, the three variations of the frames were inspired by the vivid lives of literature: the classic (Frederick) Exley teardrop; the comparably widened curvature of the (Ellen) Raskin; and the Flannery (O'Connor)'s thinner, more pointed trim.

Warby Parker deviated from the normal consideration of the Aviator in shape alone, holding still to the fundamental connotations asserted with true aviators. Meridians give the geographical degree for longitudinal direction, often used by pilots to coordinate their location. What better way to experience a world's culture than through these carefully crafted lenses? Reserve your beige lens for the Alhambra mosque of Andalusia, your blue for the rich waters of Florida. Considering the intellectual intent, I could appreciate what fine detail went in to make seemingly simplistic sunglasses so unique. As I roamed the outskirts of the showroom, glancing up and down the walls of shades in what only could be described as a modern library of eyewear, I thought not only of the intended literary influences, but looked to the selectively chosen reads lining the bottom of the shelves. Novellas from the globe-trotting expatriates, Hemingway and Fitzgerald lived the adventures they wrote. And what better inspiration than experience? With Warby Parker your motivator, seize the traveling, forever-moving world.


Warby Parker Meridian collection