Warby Parker, the online company that has now outfitted a generation (we’ll let you guess which one) with its economical, vintage-infused eyeglass frames, appears to be setting up a proper brick-and-mortar at South Congress.
Although a representative of the company wouldn’t confirm an opening date, the company’s website lists it as Summer 2016. The Warby Parker Class Trip bus, a mobile store in a school bus that had toured the country since 2012, paused on its odyssey in Austin in 2014, first on Barton Springs Road and more recently at 513 West Sixth Street.
The Class Trip bus is now gone, presumably on to its next location, so we are Warby-less for a bit.
The company—which started as an online-only business touting retro-fashionable frames at reasonable prices, great customer service, and social consciousness (it donates a pair of frames with every purchase)—has built a smattering of stores across the country and in Canada. The store at 1317 South Congress, formerly the location of Ten Thousand Villages, will be the second in Texas (Dallas got there first, dang).