Events & Announcements

Preview the New 2011 Chrome Hearts Eyewear Collection During Our Day-long Trunk Show on Saturday, December 11th!

Just in time for the holidays and the end of the Flex spending year, we’re thrilled to announce an exclusive, day-long opportunity for Metro-Detroit to get an inside look at the latest Chrome Hearts eyeglasses and sunglasses.

On Saturday, December 11th from 11 am to 3 pm, Spencer Walling of Chrome Hearts/Optical Shop International will be on location at Urban Optiques with the new 2011 Chrome Hearts Eyewear Collection.

We previewed these frames last month at Vision Expo West in Las Vegas and were extremely excited about the new designs.  So excited, in fact, that knew we had to get these frames into the boutique and in-front of Metro-Detroit eyewear and fashion lovers in advance of the new models actually shipping early next year.

Even better, Spencer will be bringing selections from the Chrome Hearts “Jewel Collection” — which includes custom eyewear featuring precious metals like 24K gold, sterling silver and rubies, diamonds, black diamonds,  and sapphires.

While we have carried a small number of these ultra-premium models in the past, December’s trunk show will be a rare opportunity to experience the larger Diamond Collection first hand. It will also provide a chance to do some early holiday shopping and light up the eyes of the eyewear lover in your life with a pair customized, jewelery-grade sunglasses or eyeglasses.

The Chrome Hearts Eyewear Trunk Show open house will run from 11 am to 3 pm and will be followed later that night by an invitation-only private cocktail reception and media preview.

If you pre-register for the open house, you’ll be entered to win a pair of Chrome Hearts “Baby Beast” sunglasses, as well as one of three Motor City Denim designer tees by Detroit fashion designer and Project Runway alum, Joe Faris. You can register here.

For details, or to request an invite to the private event, please contact us at 248.347-9090 or email us at seebeseen@urbanoptiques.com

Shopping, food and fun all for a good cause. Help support Detroit F.I.R.E. and be a hero! Plus, 20% off all sunglasses!

Start the Holiday Shopping season in style! Grab your favorite BFF and come visit Urban Optiques and other downtown shops for the 2010 “Girls Night Out, Friday November 12 from 6 pm – 10 pm.

Urban Optiques will be offering a rare discount for the night on ALL of our designer and couture sunglasses: 20% all sunglasses in the store, including FRED, Badgley Mischka, Sama, Loree Rodkin eyeCouture, Prada, Lafont, Lanvin and Chrome Hearts.  We’ll also be serving complimentary cocktails and wine.

Even better, for every $10 you spend you get a chance to enter the Downtown Northville “Girls Night Out” raffle. Northville Sports Den will host the afterglow with a drawing held at 9:30p.m.

The City of Northville, Northville Township and Detroit Fire fighters will be selling mistletoe throughout downtown.  A photo booth will be set up at Craig David Butler studios for a Holiday picture with Firefighters.

This event will benefit F.I.R.E., Firefighters Injured Relief Effort and all proceeds will go to four brave Detroit Firefighters who sustained life and career-altering injuries on August of this year.

Fab eyewear, fab time, fab cause!

See everyone tonight!

Check Out Jamie in Her New Special Edition Badgley Mischka Boyd Sunglasses!

Yes, people really do win those giveaway contests.

Just ask Jamie Henderson of Detroit, who scored herself a pair of super-lux Special Edition Badgley Mischka “Boyd” suns with 18K white gold lenses from Urban Optiques as part of September’s 944 Detroit Swag giveway.

Check out some pics we snapped of Jamie in her new shades.  Love ‘em on you Jamie! Congrats!

CrowdRise, ALS Michigan and Quicken Loans are out to raise $70,000 dollars in just seven days using Facebook, Twitter and Social Media. Urban Optiques is Donating His and Her Tom Ford Sunglasses to the Top Fundraiser!

In Downtown Detroit right now, there is an entire group of passionate, dedicated people on a mission: Help whip ALS.

They are out mining their Facebook networks, reaching out to bloggers, Tweeting like crazy, throwing in not only their own dollars, but also their precious time all to hit a very lofty and aggressive goal: Raise $70,000 dollars in just seven days for ALS Research and do it all via small, $10 donations from people on Twitter, Facebook and a social fundraising website called “CrowdRise.”

ALS — Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The mind stays sharp, but the body literally withers away making the person a virtual prisoner in their own body. The disease is fatal and has no cure. And it typically claims the persons life within 2-3 years.

The Tweet for ALS Team at Quicken Loans put together a video explaining ALS and what they are trying to do this week on YouTube. Take a just a few minutes to watch it:

How You Can Help?

Urban Optiques has joined the “Tweet for ALS” Cause this week because as one of the lesser known diseases out there, ALS simply doesn’t get the type of attention or fundraising dollars that other big (but equally important) causes like breast cancer receive.  But for anyone who has known someone who has battled ALS or understands the awful, debilitating and lethal toll this disease takes on its victims, it deserves our attention and dollars.

We also have lots of patients and clients from Quicken Loans, so we like supporting the causes that our clients support.

Finally we like that “Tweet for ALS” is trying to make a statement about the power of social networks to do good. The goal of the seven day fund-raising campaign is to raise $70,000 dollars in a very short period of time not through giant corporate donations, but a series of small, affordable $10 donations from average people.

When you think about it, this should be easy to do:  The average Facebook user has 130 friends, so if just 500 people were able to get a mere six $10 dollar donations from their friends, Tweet for ALS would have already met nearly half of their goal. If each of those six people who donated were able to get six more donations of $10 dollars themselves, we’d be at $60,000 dollars almost overnight.

You can donate by joining the Urban Optiques Tweet for ALS Team on http://www.crowdrise.com/tweetforals/fundraiser/urbanoptiques

Upping the Ante: Free His and Her Tom Ford Sunglasses for the Top Fundraiser!

To help the fundraising effort, Urban Optiques is giving away a pair of his and hers Tom Ford sunglasses with a retail value of nearly $1,000 dollars to the top fundraiser on the Urban Optiques “Tweet for ALS” Team on CrowdRise. We’ll award the sunglasses to the person who has raised the most money as of midnight, Thursday September 23.

To sign up and start raising money and qualify for the prize, just go here: http://www.crowdrise.com/tweetforals/fundraiser/urbanoptiques

It literally takes less than 60 seconds to sign-up and Crowdrise makes it easy for you to share and reach out to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.  Our goal for the Urban Optiques team is to raise $1,000 dollars in the next 48 hours.  So let’s get started!

Grab the Kids and Join Urban Optiques Sunday September 26 at the DIA for a day of Education and Fun at the 15th Annual Metro Parent Education Expo. It’s FREE!

Looking for something fun, educational and best of all — FREE — to do with the family and kids on Sunday afternoon?

How about joining Urban Optiques and more than sixty of the area’s top educational leaders at the Detroit Institute of Arts for the 15th Annual Metro Parent “Education Expo?”

The event, which runs from 10 am to 4 pm on Sunday, September 26,  not only provides you with free access to dozens of interactive exhibits,  but also let’s you DISCOVER the best opportunities for your children’s academic success from metro Detroit’s educational leaders! Even better, you can EXPLORE the exciting galleries at the Detroit Institute of Arts all for FREE.

The Urban Optiques Team will be on hand at booth #23 during the Metro Parent Education Expo with a cool, interactive display on optical illusions that is guaranteed to not only amaze, but also educate kids, moms and dads on how optical illusions work, and what they can tell us about our vision.

We’ll also be performing free vision screenings for the whole family, since studies show that vision problems are one of the leading reasons for poor academic performance among children and teens.

Finally, we’ll also be giving away lots of  fun door prizes for attendees who enter our special drawing.

For more information and to pre-register for this always-well-attended event, visit Metro Parent Magazine online.

Hope to see all of you there!

Vision Care, Style and Made-In-Michigan Products, Business and Services Come Together at Festival in Downtown Northville

It’s official (even if it’s a little last minute): Urban Optiques has signed on as an event sponsor for the 2nd Annual “Buy Michigan Now” Festival in Downtown Northville August 6th – 8th.

The three day festival will feature sidewalk sales, live music, children’s activities, a health fair, fashion shows and plenty of Michigan-based businesses and Michigan-made products.

Urban Optiques will be actively participating during two of the three days of the festival:  On Friday August 6th we’ll be providing free vision screenings from 10 am to 5 pm to festival attendees as part of Blue Cross Blue Shield’s day-long Health Fair.

Then on Sunday we’ll be sponsoring and participating in “Style Sunday” which showcases made-in-Michigan fashion, jewelry and accessories. The day includes fashion shows from renowned Michigan designers Katerina Bocci, Project Runway finalist and co-creator of Fashion in Detroit Joe Faris, and designer Cynthia LaMaide.  We’ll be on hand at the events showing the latest in trends and styles in eyewear and sunwear.

We’re particularly excited about this sponsorship because it lets us emphasize two different parts of Urban Optiques that we think make us unique: Our focus on full scope vision care for life (helping you see) as well as stocking the area’s largest collection of premium-quality boutique and couture eyewear that get you seen.

Why “Buy Michigan Now?”

The “Buy Michigan Now” movement, spearheaded by Lisa Diggs, challenges Michigan residents and supporters of the state to factor Michigan into their daily buying decisions.  In other words, whenever possible, buy locally. Whether that’s products manufactured, grown or distributed by Michigan companies, or services provided by Michigan businesses (like Urban Optiques, for instance), the idea here is to jump start and grow the local economy by supporting businesses that keep the dollars in the state.

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Check Out the Urban Optiques Team “Modeling” The Ultra-Lux FRED-Paris Eyewear at our FRED Cocktail Party and Trunk Show!

It’s not often that you get to wear a pair of $18,000 eyeglasses for an entire evening, but that’s exactly what we where able to do during Saturday’s FRED Cocktail Party and Trunk Show at Urban Optiques.

We snapped some random pictures of the team during the show wearing some of the most exquisite eyewear on the planet, thanks to Deborah Signorello, the National Sales Manager for Premiere Vision.

Premiere Vision is the distributor of both Tag Heuer and the FRED luxury eyewear collection, and Deborah helped us put on an amazing event last Saturday night.

It was our first show with FRED since buying the practice, but it definitely won’t be our last.

For those of you who attended, we thank you.

For those who couldn’t stop in, you missed something really special.

But there will be more chances in the future.

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Experience the Entire FRED-Paris Luxury Eyewear Collection at the Urban Optiques “April In Paris” Cocktail Party

We decided to celebrate the arrival of Spring by throwing a cocktail party at Urban Optiques.

But this isn’t just any cocktail party. While the  martinis, champagne and hors d’œuvres might be tempting enough on their own, the real centerpiece of the event will be the fabulous FRED-Paris Eyewear we’ll be featuring.

One of the world’s most coveted luxury eyewear brands, the FRED eyewear line features finishes in five microns of 22K  gold, platinum and palladium combined with diamonds, rubies, gems and temples inlaid with precious materials like iguana, exotic woods and buffalo horn.

FRED is rivaled only by Cartier for it’s jewelry-grade craftsmanship and quality.

Designed and produced by the legendary Paris jeweler FRED, each piece of  optical jewelry is meticulously-crafted by hand and takes seven days to create.

Many of the designs are inspired by pieces in the FRED jewelry collection, and styles range from sophisticated and elegant to chic and trendy.  Many of our clients will give the gift of FRED eyewear to others (and often themselves) for  special occasions or events where they might normally choose jewelry: anniversaries, birthdays, a promotion, or a daughter’s graduation from college.

Urban Optiques has partnered up with Deborah Signorello of Premiere Vision, the U.S. distributor of the FRED-Paris Luxury Eyewear Collection, to host an exclusive event showcasing the entire FRED collection.

This includes all of the FRED sunglass and eyeglass models (including different finish and material variations) as well as frames from the FRED Prestige Line, which combines diamonds, pearls and gemstones with precious metals and exotic woods.  Eyewear from the Prestige line can even be custom-designed to create a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry.

The Prestige line is truly optical jewelry at its finest and many of the pieces that Deborah will be presenting during the cocktail party are not normally part of our standard FRED collection at Urban Optiques.

This is a rare chance to view and try on some of the finest luxury eyewear produced on the planet.

The “Springtime in Paris” FRED Cocktail Party will be held Saturday, March 27th from 4 pm to 7 pm at Urban Optiques at 105 MainCentre in downtown Northville.

All guests who attend will be registered for a chance to win a pair of FRED PEARLS sunglasses and the first 20 people who RSVP and then attend the party will receive exclusive, complimentary Goodie Bags.

All guests will also receive a one-night-only discount on any purchase of FRED eyeglass frames or sunglasses.

Complimentary cocktails and hors d’œuvreswill also be provided.

The guest list will be limited, so RSVP online early to ensure your reservation.

For more information, please contact us at 248-347-9090 or RSVP online here.

Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway Sizzle in this Sexy Classic Heist Film at the Marquis Theatre Sponsored by Urban Optiques, Tom Holzer Ford and Starring the Gallery

The “King of Cool” makes a return to the big screen tomorrow night in “The Thomas Crown Affair” — the latest of eleven classic films Urban Optiques is sponsoring during the “Movies at the Marquis Classic Film Series” at the historic Marquis Theatre in downtown Northville.

For generations who don’t know who Steve McQueen is, we’ll fill you in quickly.

But before we do this, check out these great clips from The Thomas Crown Affair, showing tomorrow night at the Marquis Theatre:

McQueen’s life had all of the marks of either a disaster or a major success story.

His father was a barnstorming stunt pilot and his mother was young, rebellious, alcoholic. McQueen’s mom left him at the doorstep of his grandparents, and for much of his youth, he bounced between stability and chaos. Eventually he wound up in a reform school, where he straightened up his act, became a leader and eventually moved on to take acting lessons.

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Urban Optiques Signs on as “Name In Lights” Sponsor for 2010 “Movies at the Marquis” Classic Film Series

It’s official, we’re going to be sponsoring this year’s “Movies at the Marquis” Classic Film Series at the historic Marquis Theater in downtown Northville.

The Marquis Theater in Downtown Northville

Presented by the Northville Downtown Development Authority and co-sponsored by Urban Optiques Vision and Eyewear and Tom Holzer Ford, we’re thrilled to help bring eleven classic movies from four decades to Metro-Detroit film-lovers.

The series kicks off on Saturday, January 16 with the Hitchcock thriller “North By Northwest” and concludes March 27th with the film adaptation of Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade.”

In the weeks between, you’ll be treated to performances from Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Carey Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Jimmy Stewart, Doris Day, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Four of the featured films won academy awards, and the remainder probably should have.

Why We Decided to Sponsor “Movies at the Marquis”

We’re all classic film fans at Urban Optiques (”Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is one of our our optician Kathy’s favorite movies) and we love the glamour and style of Hollywood’s golden age.

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