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EXCLUSIVE: Alo’s Next Move Is Luxury Eyewear

EXCLUSIVE: Alo’s Next Move Is Luxury Eyewear

Alo is looking at the luxury market through a new lens.

The Los Angeles-based wellness brand has debuted its first sunglasses collection, extending an accessories push that has already taken it into footwear and Italian-made handbags priced as high as $3,600.

Designed in Los Angeles and handcrafted in Japan, the collection comprises six styles — rectangle, skinny oval, cat-eye, aviator and wire frames, alongside a sportier wraparound speed silhouette — priced from $250 to $375 and sold through Alo’s website and Alo Sanctuary stores worldwide, excluding South Korea. The launch is the latest expression of what Alo chief design and merchandising officer Abby Gordon deems “luxury wellness,” a positioning intended to carry the company beyond the leggings and coordinated workout sets upon which it was built.

“Everything we create is an expression of that vision, whether it’s what you wear to the studio, the bag you carry or the sunglasses you put on as you leave the house,” Gordon said to WWD. “Every category should feel connected and reflect the same point of view.”

Eyewear, one of luxury’s most recognizable and relatively accessible entry points, offers the next test of that proposition. Alo enters without an eyewear heritage, but with a highly visible brand, an expanding retail network and a belief that the cultural cachet it has built around wellness can travel across a customer’s wardrobe.

Alo’s wraparound speed silhouette eyewear.

Courtesy Alo

That expansion has been unfolding for several years. Alo entered footwear in 2023 with its Recovery Mode sneaker and has since broadened the category across lifestyle, performance and recovery styles. In 2025, it made a more overt move into luxury accessories with Italian-made handbags priced from $1,200 to $3,600.

For Alo’s executives, sunglasses represented the logical next step in the brand’s expansion. Rather than beginning with a broad licensing proposition, the company turned to Japan, long associated with precision frame production and specialist acetate craftsmanship.

“We wanted our sunglasses collection to reflect the highest level of craftsmanship, just as we did with our bags,” Gordon said. “Japan has such an incredible heritage in eyewear, and working with these artisans reinforced that true luxury is found in the details.”

The collection uses Takiron acetate, with select frames featuring palladium or gold-plated hardware. Each surface is hand-polished to produce greater depth and luster than machine finishing.

The glasses were several years in development, with the main challenge being narrowing the assortment. Alo chose six recognizable shapes rather than launching with a large wall of frames.

Designed in Los Angeles and handcrafted in Japan, the  Alo debut collection comprises six styles.

Designed in Los Angeles and handcrafted in Japan, the debut collection comprises six styles.

Courtesy ALO

“We were very intentional about keeping the collection focused,” Gordon said. “Rather than launching with dozens of styles, we wanted six distinctive silhouettes that felt timeless, flattering and versatile.”

The launch also arrives as the brand continues to elevate its wider image through fashion, travel and hospitality. Its Alo Atelier line has moved into more fashion-driven active and vacation dressing, while branded experiences in locations including Bodrum, Turkey, Cannes and Saint-Tropez have placed the company within luxury’s seasonal ecosystem.

“Alo was never interested in fitting into an existing market,” Gordon said. “From the beginning, we’ve been focused on creating our own market: luxury wellness.”

That positioning informs the accompanying campaign, filmed in Miami by director Bardia Zeinali, photographed by Stuart Winecoff and styled by Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele. Its cast includes Lila Moss, Amelia Gray, Lara Stone, Alton Mason, Matthew Noszka and Estelle Chen.

Summer Nacewicz, Alo’s executive vice president of marketing and creative, said the company was not looking to represent a single customer archetype. Rather, each personality was selected to reflect a different facet of the wider Alo community.

“So much of our philosophy is rooted in the belief that the way you choose to see the world shapes how you experience it,” Nacewicz said of the campaign, which connects eyewear’s literal function to the brand’s language of mindset and positive intention. “Eyewear shifts your perspective in a literal sense, while also serving as a reminder of the power of a positive mindset.”

Alo's debut  Japanese made eyewear campaign.

Alo’s debut Japanese made eyewear campaign.

Courtesy ALO

That language gets to the commercial punch behind Alo’s expansion. The company is betting that customers are buying into a worldview — and the social identity surrounding it — as much as they are buying a specific performance product.

According to Nacewicz, the response to Alo’s handbags reinforced the belief that consumers connect with what the brand represents beyond apparel. It also raised expectations for future launches.

“Alo has never fit neatly into a single category,” she said. “We’re much more interested in building a lasting lifestyle brand than launching products for the sake of launching products.”

For now, the debut eyewear collection serves as another measure of how far the Alo name can stretch, no longer simply applying fashion to activewear, but constructing an ecosystem in which a workout, a handbag, a Cannes activation and a Japanese-made frame all express the same idea of the well-lived life.

Still, optical would be the next consequential phase, but Gordon stopped short of confirming a launch. “Every new category has to earn its place and bring something meaningful to our customer,” she said. “Right now, we’re focused on building the sunglasses collection, and you’ll continue to see us expand into the right categories for Alo.”

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