Just in time for the Fall eyewear season, we picked up a 3/4 page Q&A in the Northville Record!

Not only were we thrilled with the coverage, but we are also extremely pleased with how well it represents who we are, what we do and what we believe sets us apart from nearly every other Metro-Detroit eyewear boutique and optometrist.

Check it out (click on the image for larger version):

Actress Megan Fox is the perfect example in our minds of why people need to think of eyeglasses as an accessory, and not just a medical necessity.

Take the eyeglasses that Fox was spotted in last year: As soon as the photos of Megan in her fab eyeglasses hit the Internet, there was a flurry of searches around what frames she was wearing.

How do we know?

Well, we watch stuff like this.  It’s part of how we track trends in not just eyewear, but also fashion and accessories. This helps us better predict what to carry in the store, as well as recommend to people what’s going to be stylish this season.

In the case of Fox, it didn’t take much more than a quick look to know right away that she was wearing Lafont eyeglasses, one of our flagship brands here at Urban Optiques.

Based in Paris, Lafont is known for its distinctive eyewear designs, which range from artsy and funky, to chic and sophisticated.

Lafont designs and introduces new models on a seasonal basis, much like the fashion industry, which means new pieces are being introduced two to three times a year.  This allows Lafont to set trends in eyewear, versus following them.  It’s a collection that is constantly being refreshed and updated, which is one of the reasons it’s one of our most popular lines at Urban Optiques.

If you spend a little bit of time around eyewear, you’ll instantly be able to identify a Lafont frame.  They have one of the most distinctive design aesthetics in the fashion eyewear industry, and they are particularly adept at developing interesting shapes and then applying unique patterns and colors to the frames – everything from leopard spots to polka dots to patterns inspired by the wings of the monarch butterfly.

The particular model Megan Fox is wearing is the Lafont Karima in black and tortoise. This is a gorgeous, classic two-tone acetate frame with just a little bit of cat-eye up-sweep to the shape. Not only is this shape very flattering on Fox, but it also works extremely well on most women.   Clearly Megan has an optician with good taste and an eye for what works with her face. So should you.

The particular color combination in Fox’s Lafont Karima – black coupled with a semi-transparent tortoise color — is also extremely complimentary to Fox’s darker, gold-toned complexion. This color combination may not necessarily work as well on someone with a lighter complexion with more pink or blue hues, but Lafont still has you covered because they offer the Karima in several different color combinations including pink, green and yellow.

We currently have the Lafont Karima in-stock at Urban Optiques. Stop into the boutique or call 248-347-9090 to make an appointment to try it on!

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way: If you are over 25 you’ll remember a time when “eco-friendly” and “fashionable” would not be uttered in the same sentence.  While Birkenstocks are great for your feet, I’m pretty certain “stylish” was never a term that applied to them.

But over the past few years, all of that has changed. Designers and retailers have come up with all kinds of creative ways to produce truly stylish eco-friendly and sustainable products from recycled materials.  One of our favorites is the Harvey Tote made from recycled seat belts, which sounds utterly horrible until you actually see it.  Turns out that seatbelts can be actually quite beautiful when weaved together into a purse or handbag.

Or take the new Modo ECO Eyewear Collection that we just added at Urban Optiques: More than 25 eyeglasses and sunglass models made from 95% recycled plastic and stainless steel. Not only are they environmentally-responsible, but they also look amazing.

MODO ECO Eyewear: Certified “Green”

The Modo ECO (Earth Conscious Optics) line is an eyewear collection marked by “firsts.” It’s the first optical and sunglass collection to be made entirely of recycled materials.  It’s also the first-ever consumer brand and eyewear collection to receive an Environmental Claims Validation (ECV) from UL Environment (ULE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a world leader in product evaluation. Getting a Environmental Claims Validation is not an easy process, so it’s quite an achievement for the New York based boutique eyewear maker.

Everything about the new Modo ECO line is about sustainability, right down to the packaging. In addition to using recycled and repurposed materials to create the frames, the collection is packaged in recycled materials and each new pair is accompanied by an easy to use mail-in recycling kit that allows you to donate your unwanted frames to charities that help supply eyeglasses to developing countries.

To top it all off, for each pair of ECO frames purchased, Modo donates one new tree to “Trees for the Future,” a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees since 1989.  The trees that Trees for the Future plant are helping reverse decades of deforestation in some of the most sensitive and biologically diverse ecosystems in the world.  Modo ECO plans to plant over a half a million trees in 2010 from sales of their eyewear. We’d like to help them get to one million (more on that in a moment.)

The Modo ECO Eyewear Collection is made up of both acetate (plastic) and metal frames, so it offers a wide range of design, style, color and material options.  We were actually quite amazed when we first saw the line at how well-styled these frames are.  They offer something for just about anyone, from classic metals and plastics, to retro-inspired shapes.

Buy A Pair of MODO ECO Eyeglasses or Sunglasses & Urban Optiques Will Plant 50 Trees!

To celebrate the addition of this fantastic new green eyewear line at Urban Optiques, and to help Modo ECO reach it’s  goal of planting a half million trees this year, when you purchase a pair of Modo ECO eyeglass frames or sunglasses from Urban Optiques, we’ll plant 50 trees on your behalf through Trees for the Future.  Just another great reason to go green with your eyewear.

Check out the new Modo ECO Collection below!

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.

Special thanks are in order to Edwards Cafe and Caterer of Northville who provided plenty of scrumptious finger foods and desserts, as well as Wine Sync for the selection of French whites and reds and gift cards.

Don’t forget that if you want to be alerted to upcoming events, special offers, trunk shows and new product at Urban Optiques,  sign up for our free Eye Candy E-Mail Newsletter. We never sell your information, and you’ll typically only get a few e-mails from us a year (one a month is typically the max.)

Without further ado, check out some of the photos from Saturday night’s cocktail party!

FRED Lunette’s Cocktail Party at Urban Optiques

Fred Paris Lunettes Prestige Collection Display

Fred-Paris Prestige Collection Featuring Precious Gems, Diamonds and Exotic Woods

The Urban Optiques Team and Deb Signorello Modeling the FRED Pearls Sunglasses

Claire Modeling the FRED Lunettes from the FRED Prestige Collection

Urban Optiques Practice Manager Lindsey In Fred Prestige Diamond Lunettes

Another Picture of Lindsey in the Diamond Encrusted FRED Lunettes

Close Up of FRED Eyeglasses

Matt in the FRED Melville Eyeglasses in Black with Platinum Temples

FRED Volute Sunglasses

FRED Prestige Bois D

Dr. Michelle in FRED Pearls Sunglasses Featuring Inset Diamonds

Close Up of Temple on FRED Pearls Sunglasses with Diamonds

Detail of Diamonds in FRED Pearls Sunglasses

Another Close Up of the FRED Pearls in Yellow Gold with Diamonds. Available also in Platinum.

FRED Prestige Eyeglasses with Quartz Fume (Smoky Quartz)

Claire in Her Pearls

Jay in his Favorite Frames in the Entire Store: The FRED Melvilles! Available also in Brown.

Lindsey in the Pearls

Mambo Prefers Ray-Ban to FRED. It

Reservoir Dogs Anyone?

FRED Lunettes

The Women of Urban Optiques

These ARE NOT FREDS on Ryan!

Ryan Trying Out a Pair of Vintage Flip-Down Readers. We do not see FRED adding these to their line anytime in the future ... if ever.

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!

In the fashion industry, Tom Ford has built a name for himself as a designer who pushes boundaries, whether in his runway fashions at Gucci or in the racy promotional campaigns for Tom Ford Eyewear that got his advertising banned in Italy.

So it’s a bit surprising to see the former lead-designer at Gucci and now award-winning director of the critically-acclaimed movie “A Single Man” introduce so many retro-inspired eyeglasses into the current Tom Ford Eyewear collection.

Or maybe not.

Vintage-inspired fashion continues to be a major theme in spring and fall collections from Chanel, Lanvin, YSL and Dior, and Ford himself just finished directing a period-piece, so retro and vintage style eyewear is probably top of mind for Tom Ford.

Which brings us to our designer eyeglass of the week: The Tom Ford TF 5116.

This is another one of those Tom Ford eyeglasses that is screaming for the right face shape and attitude.

The TF 5116 is a round acetate frame with a thick temple that honestly won’t work on everyone. But if you do have a face that it meshes with, it’s an awesome eyeglass — especially for someone who wants to make a bold statement with their eyewear.

It’s less trendy than it is unique, in the same way that genuine vintage eyewear can express individuality and still not look so edgy that it hurts.

While this is officially a men’s eyeglass frame,  it can work on women as well.

If you have the right facial structure, this frame can be amazing. It’s actually a very classic design, and depending on what you wear with it, it will either look down-to-business (with a suit) or funky (with jeans and a leather coat.)

It is available in four different colors, including brown, slate, black and tortoise.

With the right face and personal style, the TF 5116 will bring you compliments, wealth and confidence.

Yes, this frame could change your life.

Well, maybe not your life (although there is always that chance), but definitely your look.

One of the trends over the past year that we can’t get enough of is retro-inspired fashion and eyewear.

From cats-eye glasses, to heavier men’s frames with horned-rims, to the return of ’40s, ’50s and early-’60s-inspired oval shapes in women’s eyewear, retro continues to be extremely hot.

The great thing about retro-inspired eyewear and fashion is that their shapes, cuts and colors tend to be classical and enduring.

There’s a reason why vintage or vintage-inspired eyewear never really completely goes out of style: It works on a lot of different faces and can easily be matched to complement or contrast against a person’s own personal style.

One of our favorite retro-inspired women’s eyeglass frames is the FT-5117 from Tom Ford Eyewear.

Tom Ford doesn’t name his eyeglass models, choosing instead to use numbers versus words, so we usually end up developing nicknames around the shop to refer to different numbered models.  So the the Tom Ford FT 5117 is affectionately known around Urban Optiques as “that sexy librarian frame.”

Which pretty much describes this unique, half-moon acetate frame that’s meant to sit down just a tad on the bridge of your nose (or all the way down for that really smart, flirtatious-I’m-looking-over-my-reading-glasses-at-you-vibe.)

This frame feels like it’s straight out of a Mad Men episode:  Fuzzy sweaters, pencil skirts and all.

While this Tom Ford frame would be perfect on countless women in the secretary pool (if there still were secretary pools), it’s actually a very versatile, sophisticated style that would work great on a lawyer, doctor, teacher, young aspiring New York (or Detroit) fashion designer and yes …. even a librarian.

From a style perspective, the frame can match up with a lot of different looks and goes from office to martini bar effortlessly.  It has an extremely unique shape unlike any other woman’s frame we stock or have seen, so it’s almost guaranteed to to get you noticed (in a good way.)

It’s actually a fairly dainty frame — lightweight and not at all heavy on the face. The shape makes it ideal for a designer reading glass, but the lens height doesn’t lend itself to a progressive lens, so it’s really best for a woman with a single vision prescription.

But be forewarned: No matter how much you love the frame in photos, it may or may not actually work on your face.

It definitely looks stunning on Karen Elson (the British supermodel featured in Tom Ford Eyewear’s promotional materials and wife of Detroit’ s Jack White of the White Stripes), but she’s a supermodel and you could put a pair of $10 black plastic Limited Edition eyeglasses from China on her face and people would rant and rave.

So it does take a certain face to wear the Tom Ford FT 5117 eyeglasses.  Oval-shaped faces look great in this frame (but then again, they look great in most frame shapes), and women with high eyebrows and cheekbones seem to really shine in it.

But you should never let this discourage you from at least trying it on, since there is really no way to know whether any piece of eyewear will work until you put in on your face.

We currently stock the Tom Ford FT 5117 in two colors: The brown tortoise featured on Karen Elson and a similar color and pattern with a bit of a blue tint on the bottom half of the frame (which looks fantastic on women with blue eyes.)

This week’s featured designer sunglass comes courtesy of super-hot L.A. jewelry designer Loree Rodkin brought to you by Sama Couture Eyewear and Urban Optiques.

It’s the “Tommy” sunglass, which features a “skull and bones” Swarovski crystals motif on the temples.

While this sunglass isn’t for everyone (you definitely have to sport the right attitude to pull this shade off), it’s one of our best-kept-secrets at Urban Optiques. We KNOW there is the right woman out there for this killer sunglass.

In case you’re not familiar with Loree Rodkin, she’s one of Los Angeles’ hottest custom jewelers. Her jewelry designs have appeared on countless celebrities of all ages and generations, including Miley Cryus, Dakota Fanning, Christina Applegate, Marcia Cross, Ashley Tisdale, Jenna Dewan and “Twilight’s” Ashley Greene.

First Lady Michelle Obama even wore a $17,000 (borrowed) custom Loree Rodkin pair of earrings to the “We Are One” concert in Washington, D.C.

While we don’t see the First Lady wearing these Loree Rodkin “Tommy” Sunglasses, they work amazingly well with a pair of black skinny jeans and a cool, cropped leather biker jacket. Age is no limit on these Loree Rodkin shades, but the right attitude definitely is.

Based on what we’re seeing in the fashion press, we think 2010 will be marked by an edgier, tough-girl look. Expect to see more black leather, biker jackets and sterling silver accessories.  The Loree Rodkins will accentuate this look perfectly.

Like all Sama eyewear, the Loree Rodkin sunglasses are extremely well-made.

Sama also makes our exclusive line of Badgley-Mischka eyewear, and most clients can immediately recognize that these are extremely well-constructed sunglasses once they place them on their faces.

The fit and finish really tells the story. There’s a reason Loree Rodkin chose Sama to help design, distribute and market her line of eyewear: Sama knows how to get eyewear right.

Urban Optiques is the only Metro-Detroit vision care and eyewear boutique to carry the Loree Rodkin collection. We have more than 10 designs available, both in exquisite optical frames as well as sunglasses.

If there is a particular Loree Rodkin eyewear frame or sunglass that you looking for, and we don’t currently have it in stock, we’d be more than happy to order it for you at no charge and with no obligation to buy. Please call us at 248-347-9090 to make it happen.