District Vision teams with Benjamin Védrines on high-altitude titanium sunglasses

District Vision is selling more than sunglasses here. The Los Angeles brand turned Benjamin Védrines’s alpine credibility into a piece of luxury-coded streetwear equipment: the Yusuke Ti Benjamin Védrines, Graphite/D+ Onyx Mirror, a 30-pair special edition built from aerospace-grade titanium and priced at $650. The message is clear from the first glance. This is performance gear that wants to live on the face as a status object, not just in a climbing pack.

The technical pitch is doing the heavy lifting. District Vision said it used 3D facial scanning to engineer a custom fit, then built the frame as a six-base, blade-style proprietary sunglass system in lightweight titanium. The frame weighs 30 grams, measures 136 mm across, and uses 130 mm temples, with custom anodized titanium hardware and hypoallergenic rubber nose pads and temple tips. The lens, meanwhile, was shaped with early alpine and explorer eyewear in mind, then given edge ventilation to help airflow at high altitude. Anti-reflective, oleophobic and mirror coatings, plus infrared screening, push the package further into specialist territory.

That kind of specificity is what gives the collaboration fashion weight. District Vision identified Védrines as the fastest person to summit an 8,000-meter peak, and mountaineering coverage has documented his 2024 K2 ascent in 10:59:59 without supplemental oxygen. Those are the details that make the sunglasses feel less like a themed drop and more like a direct translation of extreme conditions into design language. The sharp shield shape, the graphite finish, the mirrored D+ Onyx lens: it all reads like equipment cut through with a fashion eye.

For District Vision, the collaboration also fits an established direction rather than a one-off stunt. The brand was founded in 2016 by Tom Daly and Max Vallot, and it has built its identity around tools for mindful athletes, with eyewear made in Japan and a long-running interest in titanium construction. That lineage matters. In a market crowded with logo-heavy sport fashion, District Vision’s appeal lies in precision: the idea that something engineered for thin air, cold exposure and athletic focus can still look exactly right with technical outerwear, a nylon shell or a clean black coat. That is where performance turns luxury.