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.
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!
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!
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.
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: