By James J. Spina

Though obviously a cover story, please consider this featured profile one woman’s bold initiative via social media in its numerous forms from Facebook to Instagram making an impact on her friends, her professional arena and… her self. She goes by the online moniker “opticrush” and Micki Lorelli has truly earned a 20/20 cover position as well as the love and respect of our optical universe, especially in its best Independent and Luxury guise of eyewear and sunwear.

But to hear her tell it: “Hey I’m just a Jersey girl raised near the Jersey shore where those bright pier lights and the lure of the constant carney atmosphere grabbed my attention very early in life.”

And those sights and sounds kept her close to the coast as she later settled down to a home in Florida and a devotion to eyewear and sunglasses balanced by her deep sense of style and quality.

Before her opti-quest started, Lorelli took quick note of how important a perfect fit could be in satisfying customers during a brief stint in a Stride-Rite shoe store for children. “I learned early on and big time that nothing turns off a customer more than a pair of badly fitted shoes. THAT customer is never walking back into your store if their kid’s shoes are not in a perfect comfort zone. That simple but logical step made a big impression on me very early on. And that demand to satisfy built on comfort and fit certainly wasn’t a far stretch when it came to my drift into eyewear as a professional optician.”

 Lorelli’s first stint in optical was as an apprentice at J. Barton Optical in Jupiter, Fla., in 1985. And although she now also works in real estate as well, her life is intensely focused on her role as a proud optician. She’s even married to an OD, Anthony Lorelli, but it is her gig at Juno Beach Optical owned by Cici Weinberg, OD, fueling her intense taste for the best in high-end and luxury branding, and it is within this valued position Lorelli donned her superhero persona of opticrush, impacting the social media of the optical community with a sense of passion deemable as unbounded… in a great way.


A clear assessment of the socialEYEzing scene as it relates to Lorelli should firstly note the role Facebook’s Luxury Eyewear Forum played as conceived and developed by optical veteran (of many guises) Louis Fullagar a few years ago.

Optical players from all sides of the spectrum were already eyeball-to-eyeball especially on Facebook back in the day but usually on a very one-to-one basis built on their own personas in FB. But as the optical arena dove into numerous segments of common interests on a professional level, Fullagar (then a Bevel Specs eyewear rep and now full time as a social media maven via [email protected]) realized the special zone of Independent brands and high-end dispensers might be the perfect stage for quality interplay. It is on that premise LEF initially soared. In its early stages, Lorelli was one of the highly visible “likers” and “commenters” backing up her preferences with engaging visuals, fun-fests of commentary, support and a particular style of “selfie” unique to her take on what’s beautiful and incredible when it comes to eyewear and style.

And then came… Instagram. And in this realm of oft-times hourly imaging with pithy comments and alluring images, Lorelli took flight as opticrush intent on showing the world, one sexy image after another, that eyewear (and especially Independent and High-End eyewear!) was… HOT.

Seemingly simple, delivering a proper balance on a personal Instagram site can be a nightmare but Lorelli’s vamp pulls a feat worthy of great respect. She’s a mix master when it comes to combining pics and thoughts on her children (son Rusty and daughters Julia and Samantha), her profession as a fully licensed dispensing optician, her favorite specs, her car, her dog, her day-to-day engagement with reps and customers at Juno Beach Optical, and her aggressive travel to optical shows in NYC and Vegas with her captivating blonde cohort and employer Weinberg. In fact, it might be the show floor and showroom suite adventures with Cici that cinch the essence of what it takes to truly adore eyewear as both a style and function way-of-life.

And this brings us to that elusive essence Lorelli embraces with her social persona. She’s honest about what she puts out there. She’s honest about who she is. And… and this is important… she does it all sans any sort of mean streak, with no hostility and no need to backtrack since nothing she does wanders into a cultivated negative vibe. Lessons all should likely learn as this multifaceted platform of social media increasingly impacts our professions, our political stances, our children and… ourselves. THAT standard Lorelli so boldly bares is what makes her 20/20’s OPTICRUSH, for sure. ■
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