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By Delia Paunescu: Assistant Editor
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| Guests try on frames during Labrabbit Optics’ Winter Open House.
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Imagine an event where the store interior, window display and even party guests all become part of the evening’s performance art—one that involves foreign dance and sprays of perfume. Now imagine that the event is not at a trendy art gallery, but an eyewear shop.
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| Labrabbit Optics founder and owner Coyote DeGroot. |
Chicago-based Labrabbit Optics is not your traditional optical boutique. Nor is Coyote DeGroot a traditional optician. “I stumbled across the optical industry when I was kicked out of college and got a job at a lab,” he said. Having sold vintage frames as a side business for several years, today, DeGroot is a DJ, holds an advanced certificate from the American Board of Opticianry and, since September 2010, owns Labrabbit Optics. The shop carries brands like RvS By V, Super, Prism, Drift and Jacques Durand along with a sizeable vintage collection. Breaking with tradition once more, DeGroot decided the shop’s “massive” front window was better suited as a micro-gallery space for artists in the community rather than his eyeglasses.
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| Art installation in the Labrabbit Optics window created by Lil’ Elote and Heather Marie Vernon.
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It’s no surprise then that the store’s Winter Open House in early February was not a traditional optical event. According to DeGroot, the party was held to introduce the Andy Wolf Eyewear collection to Chicago (Labrabbit is the only store in the city to carry the Austrian-made frames). Aside from unusual cocktails and socializing, there was also a “low-key durational performance” throughout the evening in conjunction with the unveiling of Labrabbit’s newest window installation—an art piece by Lil’ Elote (aka Young Joon Kwak) and Heather Marie Vernon. “The theme of the piece is the color white and the color red. It wasn’t meant to directly reference Valentine’s Day but it happened that the two coincided. The evening was very positive.” He continued, “I’m interested in exploring people’s boundaries both in my music and with events at the shop. I like to push people in a way that might be new or different and that translates to selling eyewear. I like to take people in a direction that they hadn’t considered but that isn’t outside their comfort zone.”
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| The interior of Chicago-based Labrabbit Optics.
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Guests were actively engaged by the artists. “It was on a very low scale, but it was a little confrontational,” he admitted. Over the course of the evening Lil’ Elote and Vernon moved around the space performing Butoh, a contemporary Japanese dance
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Labrabbit Optics owner Coyote DeGroot with a guest at his boutique’s Winter Open House.
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DeGroot also relinquished interior décor: “My shop is currently covered in red circles. And [the artists] painted red circles on some of the guestswith face paint. They also applied Beyonce’s signature perfume ‘Heat’ to them.” DeGroot added that the sculpture in Labrabbit’s window also contains some of the perfume, whose bottle is bright red.
“It all comes down to an aesthetic. Fashion and art have been closely aligned for hundreds of years and eyewear is just another fashionable item: there’s a design, a consideration for space, boundaries to be pushed,” he said.
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Keeping with the night’s theme, party guests were also marked with red dots throughout the event. |
As for the future of Labrabbit, DeGroot hopes to establish a running event with other businesses on his block, including of all things, a rock ‘n roll barber shop.
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dpaunescu@jobson.com
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