Google Glass as Fashion Accessory

Diane von Furstenberg was photographed in the Sunday Style section of the August 25 New York Times wearing tangerine Google Glass.  Seated next to her was Sergey Brin, her friend and Google Co-founder, wearing sky Google Glass.  They were watching DVF’s models rehearsing for NY Fashion Week 2012.  The article, Past the Glass Ceiling, reported that the following week models in the DVF runway show wore Google Glass, one model matching tangerine Google Glass to the orange squiggle on her jumpsuit.

Three days later I saw a picture in the August 28 Cleveland Plain Dealer of an Ohio State University orthopedic surgeon wearing the gray Google Glass.  And a 12 page spread in the September Vogue magazine entitled The Final Frontier – Beyond the blue horizon lies a futuristic vision of fashion  in which every model was dressed in minimalistic fashions wearing Google Glass.

What is this Google Glass?

It is Google’s attempt to mainstream wearable computing.  Clive Thompson describes  it in his New York Times article Googling Yourself Takes on a Whole New Meaning as a skinny titanium glass frame, minus the lenses.  On the right is a computer (a metal frame with a small clear cube of plastic just above the eye). When the wearer tilts her head up or touches the frame, the pinkish, translucent computer screen lights up.  The wearer can voice activate a few simple apps: Google search, text messaging, Twitter, a to-do list, and CNN hourly news headlines.  There is also a tiny camera built into the frame to record whatever the wearer is looking at.

Wearable computers have been experimented with since 1998.  What is different is that Goggle sold 10,000 in Spring 2013; 2,000 to software developers and 8,000 to people who submitted descriptions of how they would use it.  Each of the 10,000 paid $1,500 for the device.  The experiences of these users is providing information on how they could be used in day-to-day life and providing additional ideas for apps which are being developed during this trial period.  Google plans to make Google Glass available to the public next year, along with an app store.

Assessing what Google Glass can and cannot due is only one issue.  The bigger issue is acclimating the general public to accept Google Glass as a fashion accessory.

The NY Times article Past the Glass Ceiling – Pioneering women at Google are working to link the disparate worlds of high fashion and high tech by Claire Cain Miller was actually reporting on the three women: Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer, Jean Wang, a hardware engineer in charge of Glass features like optics and acoustics, and Kelly Liang, Director of Business Development, who are charged with “turning Glass into the next It accessory.” 

DVF is quoted in the Past the Glass Ceiling article as saying that when she tried on those “odd glasses”, she was floored.  She went on to say that accessories “tell someone that extra bit about you, and I think to wear Glass is to show that you are engaged, you are current, you are open to new things.”  Well ladies, kind of sounds like Google Glass is in our futures!

Sources:  Past the Glass Ceiling by Claire Cain Miller, The New York Times, August 25, 2013; Google Glass a hit with doctor by Brie Zeltner, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 28, 2013;  The Final Frontier, 12 page spread beginning page 778 in September issue of Vogue; and Googling Yourself Takes on a Whole New Meaning by Clive Thompson, The New York Times Magazine, September 1, 2013.