Google and Samsung have revealed the designs of their upcoming smart glasses, a long-anticipated entry into the wearable display category that distinguishes itself from previous attempts by partnering with two of the most culturally significant names in eyewear: Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. The collaboration represents the most serious effort yet to solve the problem that has plagued every smart glasses attempt since Google Glass — making technology that people will actually want to wear on their faces.
The designs revealed by the companies show a form factor that appears closer to conventional eyewear than any previous iteration of smart glasses. Where Google Glass’s original design broadcast its wearer’s relationship with technology through a conspicuous prism and side-mounted camera, the new generation integrates its display and sensor components into frames that could pass for standard optical wear. The involvement of Gentle Monster, the South Korean brand whose avant-garde optical designs have made it a favorite of the K-pop industry and the global fashion set, and Warby Parker, which disrupted the American eyewear market through direct-to-consumer pricing and a distinctly understated design language, signals a recognition that the smart glasses problem is at least as much a fashion problem as a technology problem.
The timing reflects a convergence of technological readiness and cultural acceptance that was absent during the Google Glass era. Display technology has advanced to the point where a heads-up display can be embedded in a lens without bulk. Battery life has improved. Processor miniaturization has reached the point where the computing power of a late-model smartphone can be distributed across a pair of frames. And the cultural stigma around wearable cameras has shifted as face-mounted devices have become normalized through augmented-reality filters, video calling, and the ubiquity of front-facing smartphone cameras.
The partnership structure itself is notable. Google and Samsung are providing the technological platform — the display, the processor, the operating system — while Warby Parker and Gentle Monster are providing what the technology companies cannot: design credibility, retail distribution, and a relationship with the consumer that is based on taste rather than utility. Both eyewear brands will offer their own aesthetic interpretations of the smart glasses platform, suggesting a model in which display technology becomes an ingredient in the eyewear design process rather than the other way around.
For the fashion industry, the Google-Samsung-Warby Parker-Gent Monster alliance represents a potential inflection point. If smart glasses can be made desirable — if the frames that contain the technology are as considered as the technology itself — then the eyewear category, which has existed for centuries as a functional necessity occasionally elevated into fashion, may be transformed into a platform for digital interaction that sits closer to the body than the phone ever could.
