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Confronted by a blur of theatrical drapes in an acid shade of yellow that is so wrong it must be right, and metres of matching carpet, it’s easy to lose focus on your mission to have your eyes checked when walking into Melbourne’s latest retail destination.
The confident offer of a beverage on arrival and lack of Snellen charts with shrinking letters adds to the confusion. Surely, there should be handbags, vertiginous high heels or piles of cashmere jumpers on the shelves, instead of sculptural eyewear lit like artworks on zigzagging shelves. Is it a luxury boutique or an optometrist?
“I don’t love the word luxury,” says Emma Buckley, co-founder of Six Six along with optometrist Dr Natalie Boffa. “The word is a bit ugh.”
“We want everyone to be welcome,” says Boffa. “But the experience, I suppose, is luxurious.”
Buckley, who was working in eyewear distribution, and Boffa, who had been in clinical environments, had circled each other for years before opening their store in January.
“I would go to eyewear fairs in Paris and Milan and visit beautiful stores,” Buckley says. “We don’t have that in Australia. Here it’s boring or very clinical.
“That was the vision. I didn’t want to do it alone. When I met Nat, we connected perfectly and it snowballed really hard.”
With the assistance of architects Kennedy Nolan they have created a sumptuous retail space complete with a lab behind dichroic glass and eye-testing rooms hidden near the curtain folds, ready to be raised for a growing market.
The Business Insider’s Eyewear Global Market Report valued market size for eyewear at $US173.89 billion ($251.75 billion) in 2025, with predictions to grow to $US291.65 billion ($422.25 billion) by 2030. This growth is driven by the health needs of ageing populations, as well as tech eyewear following Facebook parent Meta’s reported $US3.5 billion investment in eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.
While OPSM (owned by EssilorLuxottica) and Specsavers dominate the local industry, Six Six (the metric equivalent of 20/20 vision), along with other independent retailers, focuses on eyewear brands that sit above two-for-one ranges and away from mainstream luxury labels.
Frames are available from around $400, with the average customer spend closer to $900-$1000. Akoni’s 18-karat gold Eris frames sit above the $2000 threshold.
Think of the stealth wealth LGR frames worn by Prince William or Kristen Stewart’s collection of Garrett Leight glasses.
“Consumers have shifted,” says Ben Walters, chief executive of Proper Goods eyewear distributors in Sydney. “They’re looking for something more design-led and current.
“Customers are thinking more like collectors — coming back for a second or third pair, often across different styles or brands. That discerning behaviour is what’s driving the independent market forward.”
Three months in, Six Six is already seeing repeat customers, with long-term plans for more stores in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
“We have an unusually high amount of architects coming in,” says Boffa.
The acid yellow curtains must be right.
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