La Loop

Two women, who became business partners, met for a bite in New York. One, a financial executive, wore her glasses hanging on the loop of a necklace she’d made in partnership with a 47th Street jeweler. The other, a fashion industry veteran who honed her eye at Figaro Madame, Guerlain, and GUESS, saw a new style-driven accessory in-the-making. Suddenly, the notion of products that could be functional, yet equally chic, sparked a women-led business. LA LOOP, a new category of accessory that merged the elegant clean lines of a necklace with a simple silver circle crafted to hold glasses launched in 1999. Its engineering proved to be so innovative that the company earned a utility and design patent. Soon fashion cognoscente including Vogue’s Tonne Goodman and Barneys’ Simon Doonan began donning LA LOOP, images of the accessory appeared in The New York Times, eyewear luminary Robert Marc couldn’t keep it in stock, and LA LOOP’s founders began gathering friends and family around kitchen tables to help fulfill demand. Armed with a new vision-boosting accessory, a tribe of forward-thinking Loopers quickly began taking shape.