Our Story

Built for the View, Not the Logo

I fell in love with flying before I fell in love with anything else. Not just the mechanics of it — the whole world around it. The composure, the confidence, the way pilots carried themselves like they belonged somewhere the rest of us could only visit. I signed up for flight school in my late teens, certain I'd found the rest of my life. What I didn't expect was that the thing I'd carry out of those years wasn't a career in the cockpit. It was an obsession with a pair of sunglasses.

Then I Noticed the Shades

At flight school we were around real pilots every day, and to us they were untouchable. But the thing that stuck with me — more than the uniform, more than the hours logged — was always the sunglasses. Nobody will ever convince me that a pilot in full dress and a clean pair of aviators doesn't look at least a little like a superhero. Every one of us wanted a pair. We talked about them constantly. But wanting them and actually finding them were two very different problems — none of us had any idea where to look.

$300 We Didn't Have

We finally found them at Chelsea Market, sitting behind glass like they were never meant for people like us. Three hundred dollars. Not one of us could get close to that without going without food for a week and a half. I made myself a promise standing in front of that case. One day I'd own a pair. And one day I'd make sure the next kid standing where I was — staring through the glass at the life he wanted — wouldn't have to choose between the sunglasses and lunch. Over twenty years later, Liban Cello is that promise built out. We make sunglasses with the quality and presence of the pairs we couldn't afford, at a fraction of what they cost. No label markup. No logo tax. Just the shades.