Fashion Insiders Weigh In: Can Your Style Survive Google Glass?

How did a weird piece of orange plastic get into our fashion shot?

A lucky few Americans will try Google Glass. The rest of us will have to look at them.
Google Glass is a ground-breaking Augmented Reality gadget. It’s also an item of clothing. As Google runs a contest to choose a select few early adopters, the rest of us need to prepare for a world where friends and colleagues are wearing Google Glass on their face. And let’s say you end up being one of the lucky few. Do you want to be seen wearing one? We talked to fashion experts to discuss how the gadget works as an accessory.

There are two particularly interesting things about the video. The first is that precisely one other person is seen wearing Glass, and it’s a fellow sky-diver covered in safety gear. The second is that one of the shots is from the POV of a model on a runway. We suspect that the first fact belies the message of the second: Runway model or no, Google Glass isn’t all that great to look at.
It’s clear that Google is conscious of the fashion implications of a gadget that you wear on your face, and they are trying to position it as a high end item of style. After Sergey Brin jumped out of a zeppelin for I/O, the next place Google debuted the device was New York Fashion Week 2012.
But anyone who’s ever tried to buy a pair of sun or regular glasses knows exactly how hard it is to make something that frames the face nicely. “If my buyer came to me and said he just purchased 1000 units that looked like the Google Glass he would be fired,” says Jonathan Muller, CEO of Gaffos.com, a retailer of designer eyewear.
“Regarding the design as a form of function, Google Glass works, however you have to consider that people who wear glasses (or even sunglasses) wear them to fit their style profile,” says Muller. “If Google can meld Italian design with its current technology, they might have a winner.”

Google Glass. So far, this is less cyberpunk and more grandpa’s clip-ons.

Steve Jobs famously said that design is “not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” But when it comes to something sitting on your face, what it looks like matters a whole lot.
“Google is no Apple when it comes to design, the iconic white earphone, even though they could be considered a fashion are not a fashion accessory. Earphones, don’t have to fit someone’s face shape or match an outfit,” says Muller.
“It’s taken a futuristic approach in design, not something I would call ‘in style’,” he says, “At this point the Google Glass will not appeal to the mainstream (it just seems like a forehead mounted live camera) and might be relegated to the tech crowd in Silicon Valley and New York.”
That may not be such a problem for Google for now, says Jay Owens, an analyst and researcher with Face. “It’s as non-offensive as it could possibly be. It’s fine – and that’s not faint praise at all,” she says. “The whole point is for it to disappear as ‘techie thing’ or ‘status symbol’ and to become essential, can’t-live-without infrastructure.”
Until Glass does disappear, it’s going to look weird when you look at someone using one. The fact of having one will mark you out as exclusive and special. “Google Glass will say, for a bit — ‘Look, I have $1500 on my face — and privileged early adopter access’,” says Owens. It’s not dissimilar to the signalling of high end watches. “Watches are rarely fashion at all, they’re just a way of saying ‘Look I have £10,000 round my wrist.’”
If anything, Owens says, Google may have jumped the gun by offering even different colours this early in the game. “Perhaps it’s just because, as the first device of its kind on the market, emotionally I want it to present a singular, crystal clear vision: ‘This. Is It.’ I want to be seduced by the idea, or by technology, or even just the abstracted notions of ‘interface’ or ‘seamless digital-physical worlds’.”

Depending on who you ask, Google Glass either comes in too many or not enough colours.

Owens worries more about what it will be like to interact with someone who is wearing Google Glass. Though the most recent video shows off people recording what they’re doing and making use of things like driving apps to be more present, you may recall the old demo video that features a dude learning to play the ukulele while being bombarded with notifications.
That’s what we already struggle with when we have a phone on the table, Owens says. An ambient awareness means constant distraction, and a sense that we’re not all there. “Glass just puts this on your face and in front of your eyes: in the foreground of our vision. It makes explicit the fact that we all will stop mid-sentence and blank people mid-conversation should we feel the ping! of an incoming message notification.”
In the end the people wearing Google Glass are going to have to contend with the same forces that have made wearing a Bluetooth headset a faux-pas in almost every circumstance. They look weird, and they signal to the people with you that your mind is elsewhere.
“There will be genuine UX design reasons for early adopters to wear them everywhere in public,” says Owens, “but I’m afraid my instinctual reaction is still ‘God, you utter pretentious twat.’ Special occasions only, I think…”
Source:wired.com