>absurdly expensive for what they are (maybe this is a US thing) It's actually a European thing. Luxottica, an Italian company, has largely monopolized glasses

>absurdly expensive for what they are (maybe this is a US thing) It's actually a European thing. Luxottica, an Italian company, has largely monopolized glasses worldwide. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anaswanson/2014/09/10/meet-the-four-eyed-eight-tentacled-monopoly-that-is-making-your-glasses-so-expensive/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/anaswanson/2014/09/10/meet-the-... from wikipedia: Luxottica retails its products through stores that it owns, predominantly LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, and Glasses.com. It also owns EyeMed, one of the largest vision health insurance providers. In addition to licensing prescription and non-prescription sunglasses frames for many luxury and designer brands including Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Michael Kors, Coach, Miu Miu and Tory Burch,[8] the Italian conglomerate further outright owns and manufactures Ray-Ban, Persol, Oliver Peoples, and Oakley...In March 2018, the European Commission unconditionally approved the merger of Essilor and Luxottica.[14] On 1 October 2018, the new holding company EssilorLuxottica was born, resulting in combined market capitalization of approximately $70 billion.[15] The merger with Essilor additionally gave Luxottica control of Foster Grant and Costa Del Mar, sunglasses brands acquired by Essilor prior to the merger Now, I'm not an expert on European regulation, but I do get a lot of good information from Europeans here on HN, and I'd guess that the EC approved the merger because the company respects the GDPR