Two months after Google Glass announced a deal with eyewear brands Ray-Ban and Oakley, it's made another foray into the fashion world with a exclusive Net-a-Porter collection designed by Diane von Furstenberg.
"I'm old enough to have danced at Studio 54 and young enough not to have missed the digital revolution," the 68-year-old designer said in an Elle interview as she announced the collection, which includes five new frames and eight new shades.
This marks the first time a third-party retailer (in this case, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter) has been licensed to sell Glass, which was previously only available from Google. The collection drops on 23 June and you can expect to shell out in the region of $1,620 to $1,725 for sunglasses and prescription lenses respectively.
Von Furstenberg is something of a Google cheerleader in the fashion world. Last October, she hosted the first shoppable Google+ Hangout, answering pre-screened online questions and showing off items from her new collections, which were immediately available to buy in a separate tab on the Hangout video. For her spring/summer 2013 show, models walked the runway in Google Glass. The designer herself took her bows wearing Glass, recording those applauding in the front row. The resulting footage was later edited into a video for Google.
Will this finally make Glass fashionable? That's debatable. Early reviews of the collection have been mixed, with one site comparing a piece to "something the villain would wear in a 1980s ski lodge sex comedy". Others have described it as a step in the right direction, aesthetics-wise – especially since the big Ray-Ban and Oakley deal with eyewear giant Luxoticca has yet to turn anything up.
Between toxic tales of Glassholes recording people without their consent and Glass users being attacked by strangers, there's not much Glass could do to make its product less desirable at this stage. DVF is convinced that Glass is the future – but it remains to be seen if the rest of the world is ready to catch up.
Want to know what Diane von Furstenberg's world looks like with Glass? Watch her spring/summer 2013 show:
