Google Glass: The Fierce New Face in Fashion

September 20th, 2012 by Search Influence Alumni

This blog post was written so I could make RuPaul’s Drag Race and other pop culture references. The opinions and thoughts stated on the actual topic are of very little consequence.

Condragulations to the legendary mother of the wrap dress Diane Von Furstenberg, who recently teamed up with Google to unveil Glass at 2012 New York Fashion Week. In case you ain’t in the know, the tea on Google Glass is it’s a hands-free alternative to smart phones. Despite looking like a first-gen VISOR from ST: Next Generation, Glass is designed to use natural movement to navigate the operating system (you can use your eye to make calls… I think?). Glass’s ability to capture life from the wearer’s perspective is nothing short of an Eleganza Extravaganza!

You might be asking yourself: what do jersey knit wrap dresses have to do with smartphones? Nothing, on the surface. However, when you realize the fashion industry generates $20 billion annually, it is obvious why the GOOG chose fashion as its newest squirrelfriend. By making Glass fashionable, Google is ensuring that every fashionista will shill out $1,500 for a pair. On the other hand, I ain’t got a stack and a half to spend on anything but the rent. The price point is the only complaint I have with Glass. While it’s almost guaranteed to be as amazingly fantastical as Google is making it sound, the retail price is too damn high. You gotta be nuts to spend that much on an item you will sit on and break, drunkenly lose at a club, or get jacked while walking down the sidewalk. Let me just run down to Canal Street and haggle on the price of the Chinese knock-off.

After the underwhelming reveal of the ultra-thin Apple iPhone 5… actually, hold up. Let’s stop for one moment and address the public’s addiction to anorexic smart phones. We really are living through emaciated electronic epidemic. Not only do our fashion models, TVs, and a menagerie of other things need to be paper thin, but so do our phones? Yes, it is super convenient having light-weight and portable phones, but am I the only one who misses the early 90’s when this was the face of mobile phones?:

The Zack Morris phone may have been a massive brick that would never fit in your pocket, but I bet you would never lose it. Plus, it was multi-functional! You could lift it like a dumbbell for working out, hammer a loose nail, or even defend your life against a Malaysian sunbear. What can you do with your smart phone? Read War and Peace? Watch the (far superior) British version of Being Human? Listen the newest Nickelback song? How about this — make a phone call? But for real though, if Apple’s big reveal is “faster and thinner,” it stops being about bleeding edge tech and becomes more about making the most with the least. They could have done heaps with the iPhone 5 in ways of innovation; instead they make Minecraft (pocket edition) load faster? Apple: seriously, girl, you better practice “It’s Raining Men,” ‘cause you’ll be lip-synching for your life…

Far from being a rehash of old technology in an expensive new package, Google Glass represents a brand-new paradigm in the way we think of smartphone capabilities and instantaneous first-person sharing. As a futurist, I’m very excited about Glass and the possibilities it brings to human interaction and social technology — and as a person who has seen every episode of America’s Next Top Model, I think Google’s decision to pair up with the fashion industry is genius. Positioning Google Glass as a fashion accessory will guarantee it to be popular with both the “it” crowd and the “IT” crowd, and ultimately mean more coins into Google’s already-deep pockets.

That’s it, kids, enough reading for day. The library is closed and it is time for me to sashay… away.