Birthed after a Peruvian Peace Corps tenure by a man named Charlie Clifford, Tumi was founded in 1975—and since then the company’s ethos has been squarely focused on functional innovation.

“For Charlie, it was really important to bring innovation to the modern traveler—to make their life easier, to rethink the status quo,” says Tumi creative director Victor Sanz. “Charlie was always looking at the customer first, asking, ‘How can we continue to improve their journey and improve their life?’”

Today, Tumi is a global brand delivering upscale bags, suitcases, and accessories to a discerning consumer via e-commerce, specialty stores, and Tumi-branded stores around the world.

Here, we sit down with Sanz to reveal Tumi’s vision—and the inside details on the brand’s innovative, new eyewear collection, designed in collaboration with De Rigo REM’s senior creative director Tatiana De Arruda and her team.

EB: What is the vision behind Tumi?

VICTOR SANZ: What the brand is really founded on is innovation. Tumi is known for its ballistic nylon material. [Founder Charlie Clifford] saw this material used in bulletproof vests and thought, “Wow, if this can save someone’s life, imagine how great it would be for travel and bags.” That’s held true with everything we’ve done—we look outside the norm.

EB: What about style?

VS: [Customers] want function plus style. So, we started mixing in more colors and prints. But those elements had to be timeless because our products will survive for 10, 15, or even 40 years if they get handed down.

EB: What is Tumi’s target market?

VS: For a long time, it was about that world traveler and that businessperson. We realized that we have a lot more to offer the world.

One of the biggest fundamental shifts for Tumi was positioning ourselves as more of a lifestyle brand. How do we round out that journey? Not just the long-haul journey, but those moments in between.

EB: What is the focus of Tumi’s new eyewear collection?

VS: We had a lot of fun designing it—one of the most important things was the aesthetic. We wanted to make sure the styles we were picking felt contemporary, timeless, and could carry the Tumi DNA—particularly with the materials and details chosen.

[Note: Tumi eyewear includes the Journey (timeless + classic) and Icon (innovative + fashion forward) optical and sunwear collections. Tumi sunwear retails for $175 to $250 and optical retails for $211 to $305. Blue light lens readers retail for $83 each. Each frame is sold with a patented triangular leather case designed to fold completely flat.]

EB: Please tell us about Tumi’s premium Icon collection.

VS: For me, it was important to be true to the materials we were known for using, such as carbon fiber, stainless steel, and aluminum. The Icon collection is really about that materials story, plus simple tweaks in design vernacular. [For example,] we have an embedded texture [on some styles]—a nod to our ballistic heritage.

Everything in the collection is super precise. We asked questions like: How is this going to feel? What does the case look like? When I’m traveling, what do I do with the glasses? It became this narrative about individuals living their life.