Lebanese Brand Yara Eyewear Sees You

Lebanese optometrist Yara Nehme believes that finding the right pair of glasses is deeply personal.
At Yara Eyewear, frames are not chosen based on a favourite colour but through a careful assessment of face shape, skin tone and prescription needs. Gone are the days of buying the same pair of Ray-Bans because they looked good on someone else, then wearing them day and night for the next five years. Instead, Yara Eyewear replaces mass production and trend-driven shopping with one-on-one consultations led by an all-women team whom Nehme has trained to be honest with customers and willing to say, without hesitation: “No, that doesn’t look good on you.”“We see you,” Nehme says, repeating the brand’s tagline during a Zoom call from Paris. The phrase reflects both her mission and her name. In Arabic, Yara (يرى) means “to see.” Raised by a well-known Lebanese ophthalmologist, Nehme moved to Paris in 2000 to study optics and optometry. Her education eventually led her to found Yara Eyewear in 2006 as a small pop-up store in Broumana, a mountain town 20 minutes east of Beirut.

Nehme had only just settled into the routine of running the business when, a week after opening, the July War between Israel and Hezbollah erupted. Thirty-four days later, she had experienced the first of several major disruptions that would shape her career. In 2019, a week after opening a downtown Beirut store, Lebanon’s financial crisis hit.“I lost all my money,” she recalls.

“After the financial crisis, we had to lower our prices,” Nehme says. “People couldn’t pay what they used to, and we wanted to continue being an affordable brand for our Lebanese customers. Times like these require compassion.”

Soon after came the pandemic, followed by the Beirut port explosion in 2020, which destroyed the store and left Nehme injured. Today, she continues to operate the business through the latest conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

“Every year I’ve had a new challenge,” she says. “I’m fed up. But we keep working.”This year marks the 20th anniversary of Yara Eyewear. The brand now sells internationally, from Dubai and Qatar to France, while remaining firmly rooted in Lebanon. Many of its colour palettes and frame designs draw inspiration from the country’s landscapes and lifestyle.

The Meshwar Collection is perhaps the clearest example. The word loosely translates to “an outing.”
“When we do a meshwar through Lebanon, you can see everything at once — mountains, valleys, beaches, the coast, the sunset,” Nehme says. “All these colours inspired the collection.”She revisited photographs taken during those journeys, translating the blue of Lebanon’s skies, the beige of its sands and the fiery orange of its sunsets into tinted lenses. One of her favourite colours is “Aperol,” named after the bright orange hue associated with the popular summer drink and a familiar sight on the ski slopes of Faraya.

“You have to change glasses with the seasons,” Nehme says. “And with every part of your lifestyle. My clients own 10 different pairs: for the beach, for a party, for daytime, for nighttime, for summer and winter.”

For Nehme, it is difficult to imagine Yara Eyewear being based anywhere other than Lebanon.