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

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!

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:

So what do you think? Should we carry them?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

We’re in love with them. Are you?

While April in Paris is still three wintery months away, it already feels like springtime on the rue du Faubourg St-Honoré inside Urban Optiques.

That’s because on Thursday, the first of several shipments of new Lafont eyeglasses and sunglasses arrived.

We’ve added more than 40 new frames from Lafont, drawn from the new Spring/Summer 2010 Lafont Paris Collection, as well as new, fresh designs from the Issy & LA and Lafont Reedition Collections. We also added several new  Lafont Pour les Infants frames for children, ‘Tweens and infants.

While the majority of our new Lafont suns will arrive closer to Spring, we did pick a couple of very chic Lafont sunglasses, just to remind everyone that winter doesn’t last forever.

Less than two days after adding the frames, we’ve already sold three of the new Lafont models, which is a great sign.

In celebration of the addition of the new Lafonts, we’re doing a buy one frame at regular price and get 1/2 off select Lafont frames from our previous collection.

This is a great opportunity to pick up two very different styles of Lafonts (one for work and maybe something bolder for play), so be sure to ask about the special when you stop in to browse the new collection.

Just to whet your appetite a bit, we took some snapshots of the new Lafont eyewear.  Like all accessories, there’s really no substitute for trying it on, but we’re pretty certain that you’ll spot something that will inspire you to make the trip in-person.

Check back in the coming weeks as we feature some of the individual eyewear pieces from the new Lafont collection!

We try as much as possible to do things differently around Urban Optiques.

For example, we tend to carry a lot more in-store frame stock than most optical shops and optometrist offices (we like to have plenty of cool stuff on hand for you to try on); we don’t schedule our eye exams in 15 minute blocks like the chains (we actually believe in spending time with you to help you care for your eyes); and we don’t display our eyewear in the usual, factory-made, run-of-the-mill display cases (we use “rescued” antique furniture and cabinets.)

If you’ve been in our eyewear studio, you’ll know that displays are something that we spend a lot of time on.  Lately, we’ve been experimenting around with some different display approaches to enhance the visual experience of shopping for eyewear at Urban Optiques.

How we decided to present our new Lanvin-Paris Eyewear Collection is a great example.

Highlighting Lanvin

Since we’re the first Michigan eyewear boutique to carry the Lanvin-Paris eyewear line, we wanted to try something different with how we displayed the brand in the store.

Fashion junkies will know the Lanvin-Paris label instantly, but for the uninitiated, “Lanvin” will sound like … well … “French.”

So we wanted to try to capture and present the essence of France’s oldest couture design house for people who may be finding out about this legendary brand for the first time.  Despite its venerable roots, Lanvin isn’t as widely known in the U.S. as a brand like Prada or Chanel (although we think it should be.)  So we needed to somehow capture the spirit of this line and pass it on to our clients.

Matching The Display to the Brand: Capturing the Essence of Lanvin-Paris

Eyewear shops love manufacturer point-of-purchase (POP) promotional materials: You know, those little stand-up cards with pictures of models wearing the latest eyewear from this-or-that brand.

And who wouldn’t love it?

Fashion labels can spend millions on their seasonal campaigns, and the photography is always beautiful and high quality. We use plenty of it ourselves.

But again, we like to mix things up every now and then.

So for the Lanvin Collection, we decided to build a custom display.

Our Lanvin Eyewear Collection is extremely deep — we basically purchased a minimum of one piece of each eyeglass frame and sunglass that Lanvin offers (and in several different colors as well), so the collection deserved its own dedicated display case.

Instead of using the usual POP materials, however, we opted to take an “inspiration board” approach to styling the display.

We grabbed snapshots from Lanvin’s latest runway shows, pictures of the late Madame Jeanne Lanvin (founder of the Lanvin fashion house) and even dug up some vintage Vogue covers featuring Lanvin designs. Alongside this, we scattered in images from past and present Lanvin fashion campaigns.

Here’s a few snapshots of what we put together:

Our goal here was to create a visual representation of the overall Lanvin-Paris brand, and not just their eyewear.

We liked how it turned out so much that we’re considering extending this approach to our other fashion eyewear collections and displays.

But you tell us what YOU think.