We Got A Glimpse of the New John Galliano and Tod’s Line of Sunglasses and You Are Going to LOVE Them!

This week  Marcolin, the U.S. distributor of Tom Ford, Tod’s and DSquared2, stopped in to show us the new sunglass lines from John Galliano and Tod’s.

At first we were a little skeptical.

We’ve been searching for some new eyewear lines to add at Urban Optiques for several months now, and what we’ve seen so far (outside of Francis Klein) hasn’t particularly impressed us.

We pretty much knew what we didn’t want:  Yet another line of sunglasses from some giant corporate design center with yet another fashion designer’s name stuck on the temple with something akin to Super Glue as an afterthought.

There are tons of those brands out there, and outside of the designer logo itself, there’s really not much in terms of unique design to differentiate these eyewear lines from each other.

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Spring Has Arrived and So Have the New Chloé Sunglasses and Eyeglasses at Urban Optiques!

When we think of Chloé, we think gorgeous French ready-to-wear fashion, handbags — and yes — beautiful eyewear.

Just in time for the Spring and Summer sun, we’ve received more than 20 new eyewear pieces from the Chloé 2010 Eyewear Collection, ranging from subtle and sophisticated, to bold, funky and avant garde.

Urban Optiques was the first eyewear boutique to carry Chloé in Southeast Michigan and we’ve moved so many Chloé frames in the past six months, that we decided to bring more, fresh stock in.

This is truly gorgeous eyewear that you’ll want to stop in to try on — especially the new narrower eyeglass frames that work on more petite faces and Chloé’s stunning line of sunglasses that will help you see and be seen … as well as protect your eyes from UV  rays this summer.

Enjoy!

Urban Optiques 2010 Chloé’ Eyewear & Sunglass Collection

Tags: Chloé, Chloé Eyeglasses, Chloé Eyewear, Chloé Sunglasses, Designer Eyewear, Designer Sunglasses, European Eyeglasses, European Eyewear, European Sunglasses, Fashion Eyeglasses, Fashion Eyewear, Fashion Sunglasses, French Eyewear, French Sunglasses, L 039Amy, Urban Optiks, Urban Optiques, Womens Designer Eyewear, Womens Designer Sunglasses, Womens Eyewear

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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Urban Optiques’ “La La La Lafont” Video Makes the Official Lafont-Paris Eyewear Blog!

We woke up this Saturday to find that our first experiment in trying to bring our eyewear alive for our clients and patients through video got noticed …  4,000 miles away in Paris!

Yesterday, Lafont featured the Urban Optiques video highlighting one of our favorite French eyewear designers on their official blog “Le Blog LAFONT.”

What’s most remarkable to us about this whole story is that Lafont found our video on their own. We never tipped them off.

Lafont recently relaunched their website and included a blog as part of the redesign, which we thought was really forward-thinking.  So it was the highlight of our weekend to find our video included Lafont’s website.

You can check it out here:

http://blog.lafont.com/2010/03/12/lafont-clip-by-urban-optiques/

And here is the video on Optiques TV that started it all:

Hopefully this will intrigue you enough to come in and check out the more than 70 Lafont-Paris eyeglasses we have in stock at Urban Optiques!

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The Lafont Brazil Sunglass puts the “Tres” in “Tres Chic” with this Magnificent Round Sunglass that You’ll Never Find at “The Sunglass Hut”

If you haven’t noticed yet, we adore everything about Lafont.

From their inspired optical eyeglass collection that offers a color, pattern and frame shape for seemingly everyone (it’s just a matter of trying them on, trust us) to Lafont’s imaginative sunglass line that breaks every convention — yet seem to always look so sophisticated, classy … and well … so French –  Lafont continues to be one of our most popular eyewear lines among both our clients and the Urban Optiques team.

Last month, we refreshed our Lafont eyewear collection and brought in over sixty new Lafont frames from their 2010 Spring eyewear collection. Being the sun lovers that we are, we also picked a half-dozen new Lafont sunglass models as well for the store.

It’s how we people in the eyewear business remind themselves that Spring will eventually come: We buy new sunglass stock.

One of the Lafont sunglasses that really made our heart pound was the Lafont Brazil.

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Tags: Designer Sunglasses, European Eyewear, European Sunglasses, Fashion Sunglasses, French Eyewear, French Sunglasses, Lafont, Lafont Brazil, Lafont Brazil Sunglasses, Lafont Eyewear, Lafont Paris, Lafont Paris Eyewear, Lafont Sunglasses, Metal Designer Sunglasses, Metal Sunglasses, Proenza Schouler, Proenza Schouler Sunglasses, Round Sunglasses, Sunglass Hut, Sunglass Shack, Urban Optiks, Urban Optiques

The Lafont Venise Eyeglass Frame is the Perfect Complement to this Spring’s Runway Looks

We’ve been watching the Spring couture collections like hawks around Urban Optiques and one thing is clear: Safari-inspired fashion and wild-at-heart eyewear to match is still hot, hot, hot.

We weren’t sure if the animal-kingdom inspired looks that we saw out of Donna Karan in this Fall would make it through into the Spring 2010 collections, but they did.

Everywhere we look, animal print and textures seem to be in.

And we’re none too glad for it, since we just received in a slew of new eyewear to complement the leopard prints, reptile textures and soft, muted browns, greens and khakis that appear to be winding their way into plenty of couture collections this Spring.

Which bring us to the Lafont Vanise, which is one of our favorite frames around Urban Optiques right now.

This isn’t one of Lafont’s latest releases, but it does signal their ability to spot trends long before they happen.

This frame is sophisticated and completely gorgeous, replicating an alligator-type texture on the temples with a wild but sophisticated acetate frame that is just screaming for someone to grab it and put it on their face.

The frame retails just north of $500 dollars, but we think it’s worth it.

Even better, the Lafont Venise comes in six different frame and temple colors, which got us thinking:

Could we match the Venise up with more than one look for Spring?

So we looked at four different Spring 2010 designer runway looks from Paris and New York (from Dior, Akris, Tory Burch and Chris Benz) and matched them to a coordinating Lafont Venise eyeglass frame.

We also picked some killer shoes to match the eyewear, grabbing selections from Manolo Blahnik, Sergio Rossi, Behnar Kanan and Tanja S. London.

Turns out that that the Venise worked with each one of them flawlessly — from retro-inspired fashions to “bad girl” couture.

It’s truly rare to find a piece of designer eyewear that meshes with so many different styles, but somehow the Venise from Lafont pulls it off.

Check out the looks we put together:

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Tags: Cool Eyeglasses, Cool Eyewear, Designer Eyewear, European Eyewear, European Eyewear Detroit, French Eyewear, French Eyewear Detroit, Lafont, Lafont Eyeglasses, Lafont Eyewear, Lafont Paris, Lafont Venise, Spring 2010 Fashion, Urban Optiques, Vanise Eyeglasses, Venis Frames, Venise

Should We Carry the Francis Klein Eyeglass and Sunglass Lines?

We’re looking to add a couple of select eyewear and sunglass lines to our current collection this Spring.

One of the designers who caught our eye was Paris-based Francis Klein.

There are a few of reasons why we are considering adding Francis Klein to our existing eyewear collection at Urban Optiques:

First, they just make beautiful, retro-inspired eyewear that’s hand-made in Paris.

Their frames — both optical and sun — are amazing works of art made by people who are passionate about creating unique, one-of-a-kind eyewear.

Second, no one in Michigan is carrying eyewear from this little French treasure (at least as far as we know), which makes them an even better fit for our buying philosophy.

Third, we love working with independent companies that haven’t diluted their brand or product through some giant corporate distribution network.  Like L’Amy (the distributor of our Lanvin-Paris and Chloé frames) and Lafont-Paris, they are a joy to work with since they don’t have some giant company making the decisions from a disconnected boardroom. These are people who get what we do and will not compromise on quality, style or service.

It’s something we really appreciate around Urban Optiques, because it’s the essence of who we are and what we stand for.

So check out some of Francis Klein’s eyeglasses and suns and tell us what you think:

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Tags: Designer Eyewear, European Eyeglasses, European Eyewear, European Sunglasses, Francis Klein, Francis Klein Eyeglasses, Francis Klein Eyewear, Francis Klein Sunglasses, French Eyeglasses, French Eyewear, French Sunglasses, Luxury Eyewear, Luxury Sunglasses, Retro Eyewear, Urban Optiks, Urban Optiques