Sunglass Hut

Sunglass Hut was founded in 1971 in Aventura, Florida and acquired by Luxottica in 2001, which placed it within the world’s largest eyewear company alongside Ray-Ban, Oakley, and the licensing relationships for Oliver Peoples and the major European fashion house sunglass lines. The Georgetown store at 3219 M Street NW is the single-category sunglasses retail format that Sunglass Hut has refined over fifty years: the full range of the Luxottica brand portfolio and the other brands that the company distributes, in a store environment designed specifically for sunglass selection.

The brand selection reflects the Luxottica portfolio and the major brands outside it that the retailer has wholesale relationships with: Ray-Ban and Oakley are the anchor brands, the former for the lifestyle and heritage sunglass market and the latter for the performance sport and outdoor market. The fashion house licenses, including Prada, Gucci, Versace, Burberry, and others, represent the designer end of the sunglass market where the same frame design will carry multiple brand names depending on the licensing iteration.

The Georgetown location serves both the M Street foot traffic that the commercial block generates and the Georgetown resident or visitor who wants to replace a broken pair or acquire a new pair while visiting the neighborhood. The single-category focus means the staff can be specifically knowledgeable about sunglass fit, lens technology, and the practical differences between polarized and non-polarized lenses, which the staff of a general optical retailer that also handles prescription glasses may not specialize in.

For the buyer who wants to try multiple brands and price points before committing, the M Street Sunglass Hut provides more sunglass options in a single location than any other Georgetown address. The prescription lens service, which can add prescription sun lenses to selected frames, provides the option for wearers who need vision correction alongside sun protection.

Hours run from 10am Monday through Saturday and 11am Sunday, with Friday and Saturday extending to 9pm. The in-store optical consultation, which the brand has developed as a service for prescription sun lens customers, adds a vision correction component to the single-category sunglass retail format. For the buyer who needs prescription lenses but also wants designer frame choices, the Sunglass Hut prescription service provides a larger frame selection than a typical optical retailer’s sunglass category while focusing on the frame designs produced specifically for sun use rather than prescription optics. The M Street store at 3219 is on the upper commercial block, accessible from the Georgetown Circulator and the surrounding street parking. Hours run from 10am through 8pm or 9pm daily, with Friday and Saturday at 9pm and Sunday at 7pm. The lens cleaning cloth and spray that Sunglass Hut provides with every sunglass purchase are among the small-service details that make the category retail experience more complete than buying the same frames online. For Georgetown customers who buy prescription sun lenses through the store, the fitting process is handled at the time of purchase, producing lenses that are centered for the customer’s specific pupillary distance and segment height.