This past weekend was the almost made-up sounding l.a.Eyeworks Big Sale. It’s was a gigantic Friday, Saturday, Sunday event that we wanted to go to because we like sunglasses and we love the brand. We didn’t expect for it to be “such a thing,” though. We anticipated it to be a small little walk in, walk out shopping experience. PSYCH: it was a brilliant crazy busy retail frenzy! It was basically the Barneys Warehouse Sale for sunglasses–but not overpriced and crappy.

We stopped by their Melrose flagship store around 4PM on Friday afternoon. We were anticipating it being busy but not anything we couldn’t handle. What did we pull up to? A pretty long line! We were shocked! How great!! We fell in behind a group of well dressed young bros and older people, many of which were bespectacled and peeking into the windows to see what was inside. There were brightly colored umbrellas in case the gloomy Friday skies decided to pour and a big box of Ferrero Rocher left out as waiting food. Tons of passersby stopped to ask what was going on. One woman who just exited the sale told a man, “It is the most fabulous sale in the world. If you wear any sort of glasses, you have to go inside.”

This got us pretty pumped.

After maybe twenty minutes in line, we made it in and–boy–was it packed with many glasses hungry customers. With little black trays for sunnies in hand, people picked through pair after pair from the tops of lots of tables they had setup in the space. They ranged from hyper-colored candy frames to black, unbranded Ray Ban like frames. They were heavily reduced from their $200, $300 price points to $100something and $25. Everything in the store was incredibly tempting to buy and all their very cool employees were super friendly, knowledgable, and helpful despite the glasses hysteria happening around them. Gai has a great team!

After picking up tons of glasses and weighing if they fit right or looked good or were at the right price point for us, we settled on two pairs of super interesting round sunglasses. How much were they? $25 each. $25!!!! Can you believe that? Get this, too: they were reduced from $215. We couldn’t believe it. We spoke with l.a.Eyeworker Brent Zerger while at the sale and he was a little concerned that the sale was a bit overwhelming. Psssssh: it was wonderful! They were playing some fantastic classic hits mixed with nineties jams, everyone had a smile on their face, and, whenever you put on a pair of glasses and looked at someone, they told you how you looked. It was the friendliest sale in the world! It was this year’s Modernica Factory Sale–but with glasses.

After a swift twenty minute sweep, we took our fifty dollars worth of glasses to the register and checked out with Gai. She was getting people set with their glasses and was super pumped to have us (finally!!) fitted with some l.a.E frames. We were sure to grab some reduced price hard cases as well and we were on our way for a late lunch at Village Idiot. The l.a.Eyeworks Big Sale has to have been the sale of the year. Everyone there was nice, the atmosphere was fun, and you there was no retail guilt in buying something. We wish we had the foresight to have thought the sale was going to be so big because we would have done all of our holiday gift shopping at this sale. Next year!