Selin Olmsted Studio is an eyewear design and trend forecasting firm based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Born in 2015, it is the very first eyewear design studio in the U.S., says founder Selin Olmsted. And three years ago, she adds, Selin Olmsted Studio launched the first eyewear trend report of the global eyewear market—the 2025 Eyewear Trend Report.
“While many trend reports existed for the fashion industry, the trend forecasting information was being created primarily for fashion design and brands or fashion accessories brands—for things that are not worn on the face,” says Olmsted. “We would look at these reports and see fashion show images of models wearing eyewear on the runway. However, the world of eyewear is not all runway images.”
Olmsted said she knew they needed to do a deeper dive. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we as eyewear community members create a resource where we only have tools of and materials of the eyewear industry and we make sure we gear it for all segments?’ And we launched the 2025 Eyewear Trend Report.”
The third iteration of the Eyewear Trend Report landed in Fall 2025—the 2027 Eyewear Trend Report. “Our goal has been always to provide this resource for all segments of the eyewear industry, from material and eyewear manufacturers to creative teams, product teams, and optical store professionals and owners,” she says.
Here, we check in with Olmsted for a teaser to the key eyewear trends of 2026—and a longer-term look at what’s on tap for 2027.
How do you do your trend spotting?
The way we communicate trends is to first look at what’s happening outside of fashion, outside of eyewear. We look at macro concepts, for example, in music, art, culture, interior design, architecture, industrial design, and in a sociopolitical environment as well. From there, we take the hints and the patterns, then we do a runway analysis. After that, we look at what’s happening as far as street style goes. We collect all this information, and we see how that is trickling or that will be trickling into sunglasses and then optical frames separately. Finally, we communicate a color palette for each trend with acetates and with lenses.
We provide the vendor name, we provide the code, with lenses we provide the category number, the transparency, whether it’s the type of material, whether it’s nylon, PC, or CR39. With acetates, we provide vendor name, color code, and there is a 3D color render rendering of each chip and of each lens.
The way we communicate trends is to first look at what’s happening outside of fashion, outside of eyewear. We look at macro concepts, for example, in music, art, culture, interior design, architecture, industrial design, and in a sociopolitical environment as well.
Selin Olmsted
Do you tap other experts for information?
Yes, and 2027 was the first year where we welcomed a think tank group because we felt like we needed to welcome professionals and experts from other industries and our community as well. So, we welcomed the fashion director of Odda Korea, which is a fashion magazine which we love to follow from Korea. She joined from a fashion editorial perspective.
After that, we also welcomed business owners from two innovative R&D-focused eyewear manufacturers from China, Davis and Edward. The reason for that is we got great feedback from our customers who purchased the 2026 and 2025 reports—and some of them mentioned that manufacturing innovations actually influence the trends as well. And they are absolutely right about that. So, we wanted to hear from actual manufacturers—what are the innovations they are working on? And we took those techniques and we also incorporated them into 2027 report.
When will the 2028 Eyewear Trend Report come out?
We have to make sure that it is available for the product teams before they start their seasonal collections. Launching in September is our goal for the ’28 report.
Can you give us a sneak peek into the 2026 eyewear trends?
Absolutely. For ’26, we identified five key eyewear trends:
- Sculptural
- Sentimental
- Punk Quotidien
- Surrealism
- Ultralight
TREND: Sculptural.
This is a trend where designers in industrial design, architecture, interior design are no longer just designing perpendicular shapes. Everything is sculptural. Every plane, every surface of the product tells a story.
In Eyewear: A lot of eyewear designers and product teams are approaching eyewear in this way as well. So, we see a lot of unique beveling techniques, surfacing techniques, step downs, step ups.
TREND: Sentimental.
In a world that’s a little bit unpredictable, we are going back to earlier years that give us a really nice, cozy, pleasant feeling. We think of our grandma’s, grandpa’s home where we spent time, those corners and those details or our childhood. And there is a lot of sentiment going back to elements and products of retro years. This is happening, especially with Gen Z and newer generations where they’re saying, maybe the earlier years were better years. And they want to use the LP player. They want to use the Walkman and listen to cassette tapes again.
In Eyewear: We see a lot of asymmetrical details on the left and the right temples, a lot of unique inside temple branding, and metal decorations coming to place.
TREND: Punk Quotidien.
This trend is redefining the norm of beauty. Maybe the beauty can be with a lot of hardware. Maybe the beauty doesn’t have to be with beautiful color. We look at inspiration to the rave kids in Berlin in the ‘90s and in New York City. We look at a lot of punk rock elements and bands in England in the past, but also the punk bands that are coming up right now.
In Eyewear: We see lenses in full coverage, category three smoke lenses—this feeling of “don’t interact with me, I want to cover my entire eye,” or category one, red-tinted lenses or some vibrant colors that we used to see in raves. Eyewear colors are blacks and grays or in a lot of metals as Gentle Monster is doing. And metallics are still present with acetates and plastic as well.
TREND: Surrealism.
Surrealism is kind of creating a new reality. And it was also the 100th Year Surrealist Manifesto last year. We also see the haute couture designer, Schiaparelli, becoming extremely popular and important. So, a lot of designers are questioning, for example is this a shoe or is this part of a bustier and a corset? Is this an umbrella or is this a handbag? Is this a pencil or is this an accessory on a shirt? What a wonderful trend, it is so fun.
In Eyewear: Silhouette used to do this a lot in the past in their vintage collection—there’s one metal eyewear style that we have in the trend report where a hand is the metal end piece. So, it can be done in a really unique way.
TREND: Ultralight.
In Eyewear: While we have a lot of modernization of retro with statement eyewear, we also see the opposite from that, where a lot of customers don’t want to feel their eyewear. So, materials like high density acetate, where we can do super thin thicknesses and rim heights or titanium and beta titanium come in play. And 3D printed materials are allowing us to do also super-light sports eyewear styles as well. And so ultralight is definitely one of the important trends that performs well in sales and is very present right now.
To help our readers prepare for the 2027 buying season, can you share a teaser of key trends in the 2027 report?
All our reports are available on our website, www.selinolmsted.com. In the 2027 report, we also forecasted five trends. The first one is free to download—that one is called Blendism.
2027 TREND: Blendism.
This is basically where different lifestyles and different worlds are kind of clashing, are blending, are merging. This is what we started seeing in music, art, interior design, architecture, and fashion.
In Eyewear: Sports eyewear, fashion eyewear, and lifestyle eyewear are all merging together. We have sports eyewear components, like a high function lens—such as a photochromic lens with AR coating or with polarized lenses or AR color-boosted technology lenses—and we place them in fashion eyewear.
Or we take a fashion frame, like a glamorous, fabulous, oversized fashion frame, but we add in sports movement temples from the same materials. Or we take a classic P3 on the front, but we put these vintage paddle temples on the arms. Or we take sports eyewear that is super wrapped and curved with the head curve and has eight base lenses, but we make that in acetate, which is a fashion lifestyle eyewear material. So, worlds are blending, archetypes are clashing.
[In 2027] we’re going to see a lot of neutrals, tons of different tones of khakis, beautiful browns and beiges and quartzes. However, the lens will be kind of a happy color—more mineral-baked energetic tones.
Selina Olmsted
2027 TREND: Irregular.
In Eyewear: Irregular can be done in eyewear in many different ways. Designers can think of ways where the outer shape of the frame front is not parallel to the lens shape. So the lens shape can be maybe an aviator lens shape, but maybe the outer frame shape can be a navigator or deep square rectangle frame shape. With that comes irregular rim heights that can be emphasized with bevels and surfacing.
In general, 2027 is a year where eyewear frame colors are not going to be super bright and saturated colors. Again, Gen Z and millennials are becoming really important with their discretionary income becoming higher. They don’t wear super bright saturated colors for frames, but they carry the seasonal color story with lenses. So, this is exactly what’s happening with ‘27. We’re going to see a lot of neutrals, tons of different tones of khakis, beautiful browns and beiges and quartzes. However, the lens will be kind of a happy color—more mineral-baked energetic tones.
Want to learn more? Check out the 2026 Trend Report in full on the Selin Olmsted Studio website at www.selinolmsted.com.
In addition to the Trend Report, the Studio also does product development, production quality control oversight, and importing. “We provide end-to-end services to all small, mid-size, and large independent or licensed eyewear companies globally,” says Olmsted.
“And we’re always here for any questions,” she adds. “If our optical store professionals or anyone else would like to jump on a quick Zoom with our team, browse through the report before the purchase, or would like to speak with our team, we’re here. They can reach us through the contact page on our website.”