Google Glass is high fashion in September Vogue magazine

Let's face it: Google Glass has an image problem. Even people who like the idea are forced to admit that wearing Sergey Brin's high-tech specs in public makes you look like a dork. But there may yet be an antidote to that. Opening spread of a Google Glass photo shoot from the September 2013 issue of Vogue See? Those Google …

[Ketlan]

Still a dork...

I'm not sure if the woman in the image looks like a dork because of her weird hair style, her bizarrely thin waist or the idiotic outfit she's wearing. I hardly noticed the Google specs.

[Don Jefe]

Re: Still a dork...

The fact Google Glass has now been features in a "high-fashion" magazine pretty much, thankfully, means commoners won't be wearing it. As you note, normal women neither look, dress nor style themselves like the ambulatory semen buckets in these magazines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

@DJ - Normal people weren't going to wear them in any case. Getting them in Vogue helps counter the 'glasshole' effect. Smart move on Google's part

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

Look at all the comments people get just wearing a bluetooth headset, something that should be commended as they won't be holding their phone.

So it's more the fact that people think others wearing gadgets on their head looks stupid.

But it's not just the aesthetics, it is hoards of morons walking around talking to a device. The interface for Google Glass is just crap.

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: Still a dork...

I have to confess to feeling just a tiny bit jealous of the bluetooth earpiece-wearing folks, y'know, on account of it looking all Star Trekky and all. Too bad they aren't just a bit smaller; as it is, they look... well, dorky.

I, for one, always dug those ultra-light headsets that the astronauts and mission controllers wore during the Apollo era. They even had a version that clipped onto a pair of eyeglasses, which I thought was way hip. Sadly, all the Apollo-style light ear sets I've seen are made for those multi-line landline phones.

I tried a couple of different light ear-clip headsets for my mobile, and didn't dig either one of them -- they were either too clunky, or too uncomfortable -- and went back to the earphone/lavalier-clip mic that shipped with the phone.

[Tim Parker]

Re: Still a dork...

"But it's not just the aesthetics, it is hoards of morons walking around talking to a device. The interface for Google Glass is just crap."

Maybe, but in that respect i'm not entirely sure how much different it is to all those folk nattering to their phone via a waffer-theen headset and clip mic - not saying either is particularly great, but one is already popular and seemingly accepted. I still do a double take quite often to work out whether the person apparently talking to thin air while staring around is really a nutter, trying to talk to me or just on the phone, a lot of people don't even blink - times change, wasn't it ever thus ?

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Nicho Re: Still a dork...

" @DJ - Normal people weren't going to wear them in any case. Getting them in Vogue helps counter the 'glasshole' effect....." We'll, let's face facts. Raquel Zimmermann looks pretty hot regardless, so the glasses are inconsequential. For the average Joe, Raquel Zimmermann would be shaggable if she wrapped her head in a beach towel and a Zoro mask. But the average Jane trying to pull the male equivalent of Raquel? Still not going to improve her chances no matter how much Channel she sprays herself with, and again the glasses are inconsequential. All they will do is attract less-than-average Joe nerds, which is probably the last thing average Jane wants.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

Getting them in Vogue helps counter the 'glasshole' effect. Smart move on Google's part

Yes, I wonder what Google has paid for that. Or was it a promise to filter out any negative results on searches for the owner's and editor's name?

However, there is a vast gulf between getting some fancy people to wear them in an artificial shoot and it becoming fashionable. The people who define "fashionable" also happen to be the same people that have massive privacy issues already, so I'm not sure those two streams will ever meet other than through extreme sponsorship, blackmail or ignorance. Ah - the latter. Most of these people are indeed practically techo-virgins so they may now yet know what they let themselves in for, and once it has happened it will be too late.

And they still will be Glassholes.

[Mike Flugennock]

"Ambulatory Semen Buckets"?

+1 internets to you, pal.

You mind if I appropriate that phrase for use in day-to-day conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

@DJ - oh and before I forget, have a massive downvote for calling models 'semen buckets' ... Shit dude, show some class, or at least common decency, will ya ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

I think he kind of nailed a good description of them but I guess that view doesn't acknowledge the fact some of them could be lesbians.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

What a sexist comment, and you wonder why there are so few women in IT when sad men come out with drivel like that.

Model or good looking women does not equal someone who puts it about a lot and in any case even if she did, it's her body she can do what she wants with it and people like you don't get to judge.

[Don Jefe]

Re: Still a dork...

You are absolutely wrong. People do get to judge.

Just as models are free to sell sex and exhibit lunatic fascination with fancy accoutrements in order to pump up their self worth, people are free to laugh at them and their shallow behavior. Absolutely no different than laughing at a geek for their raging iPhone or Galaxy S4 boner.

It is far more likely that the reason there aren't many women in IT is because there is a surplus of egos and easily offended individuals who are so full of their own contradictory bullshit that no one, especially an intelligent woman, would want to be around them. So they sit, lurking in the basements and dark bedrooms of the world, ready to pounce on whatever concept thy believe will make them seem worldly and attractive but that they manage to wholly misunderstand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

@Don Jefe - You can't even see that your comment is not acceptable. It's utterly pathetic, you can make excuses all you want, but you are wrong. You don't get to make morality judgements against others based on knowing nothing about them or their lifestyle, dressing it up with a comment that says "they're all the same therefore I can judge" shows you to be utterly out of touch.

People like you prevent women coming into IT. The really sad thing is that you can't see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

"As you note, normal women neither look, dress nor style themselves like the ambulatory semen buckets in these magazines."

Actually, this inspires the "down the line" fashion to a great degree. The fact that you (a) don't know this and (b) seek to elevate yourself by unjustly labelling people who just earn a living in a different field than you are familiar with means you probably have no sense of style, actually are well aware of that and somehow try to compensate by insulting others.

But do not despair. Fashion needs your socks-in-sandals types.

For contrast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

I feel weird doing this, but this scene from Devil Wears Prada is very much appropriate here. Also Meryl Streep really does nail the delivery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LVptO7o4L8

High fashion does affect the high street. Google will be very happy about this piece, it's seriously good news for the image of Glass. There's a hell of a lot more people read Vogue than sit in IT departments making moronic comments about models.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

I'm with you there. This TED talk from Johanna Blakley is quite interesting too - nicely cuts into those IP arguments everyone is having..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still a dork...

@Don Jefe: What an appallingly sexist comment and people wonder why there are so few women working in IT. Dinosaurs like you need to learn that just because someone is attractive and makes a career out of being photographed, doesn't mean that she puts it about. Even if she does put it about, it's her body, she can do what she wants with it and people like you don't get to judge her. Your comment is one step away from "she was dressed provocatively, so she deserved it, yer honour."

I'm guessing that a guy who managed to get a lot of sex, in your eyes, would be a bang up chap? Some sort of stud? No?

Pathetic.

[LarsG]

Re: Still a dork...

We call them knob heads in the UK. Says all there is to say about the world of fashion.

[BlueGreen]

ouroboros

The media wraps into a perfect loop, feeding on its own output and recycling google PR into its own stories, then into stories of stories. Welcome to the new reporting (dear reg, please don't publish predigested redigested witless crap).

[Don Jefe]

Re: ouroboros

You gotta give El Reg credit though: They keep the recycled mumbojumbo and sponsored stories to a bare minimum.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

If it wasn't stone dead before

It sure is now.

[Ian Yates]

Re: If it wasn't stone dead before

Maybe as a consumer device, but the accessibility stuff coming out of the Universities using Glass is incredible.

[Anonymous Coward]

...

"Lest you brush off Vogue as a magazine that knows more about tailoring than it does about tech"

"It was not commissioned"

"interview with Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer"

Hmm...

[h3]

I think I agree with whoever said to the effect of

"Fashion is something so hideous it has to be changed every six months" - Don't remember who or the exact statement.

Fatboy Slim kind of gets it as well.

"They know what is what but they don't know what is what they just strut what the f**k".

[johnnytruant]

You have a choice:

"What is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." - Oscar Wilde.

"Fashion is something so ugly it has to be changed every fifteen minutes, but style is something versatile, it's in the way you walk and in the way you smile" - 'What's Going On' by 90's rap-rock-politico-punks, Senser.

[John Smith 19]

Or for added catiness let's not forget

"Men seldom make passes at women who where (Google) glasses"

True that.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Johnnie Thicko Re: Or for added catiness let's not forget

".....True that." Seriously? Going by your witless posts I would have thought your chances are so limited you really couldn't afford to be shutting down your options, even glassholes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Or for added catiness let's not forget

I think girls look hot in glasses... although I had laser surgery to correct my own vision, I got fed up waking up not able to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Or for added catiness let's not forget re: AC @06:18

Or you could do what I do, that is, wait until after sunrise to wake up.

Or you could do what i did in college, which was, memorize your house and the location ofeverything in it.

[frank ly]

I always thought that Google Glass ....

would be in vogue one day.

[Neil Lewis]

Funny juxtaposition

I found it amusing that the story about Google Glass in Vogue, expressing the view that the model looked dorky (presumably only because of the glasses and not because of any other idiosyncratic styling choices) was placed alongside an image linking to a story about Kevin Bacon - a man presumably seen as 'cool' by those paying to use him in advertising - wearing rather similar, dorky glasses. Funny that.

[Harry]

Glamour?

She looks like a 1960 petrol pump attendant to me.

[Don Jefe]

Re: Glamour?

You must be from the UK. Here in the US we didn't let our women operate fuel dispensing equipment until the late 1970's and only then with proper supervision by a qualified male.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Glamour?

Joke sign or not, you're doing it again. Sexist bullshit dressed up as a joke. Pathetic.

[Chris G]

Haute Glassure

I have some involvement from time to time in the fashion Industry, if you take a look at any of the high fashion blogs and pay attention to what the designers of Haute Couture are wearing and how they dress, it becomes apparent that none of them have any style at all.

More importantly for Google though is that there is a world of difference between being highly fashionable and simply cool.

Even if wearing an ugly unfinished pair of glasses and talking to the air was considered high fashion it can never IMO be considered cool. So if you want to be a high fashion Dork... Get Glassed and become a glasshole.

[Vociferous]

Frankly I don't really care what they look like. I care what they can do.

Can they give me a heads-up GPS display, then I'll probably buy a pair.

As for privacy: everyone + dog already carry a positioning device with sound and image capture capacity. If you're not worried about cellphones, it's simply irrational to be worried about glassholes.

[Chris G]

The biggest worry about glassholes is not so much how they look (although I do find talking to air rather strange) as available bandwidth. The bandwidth that concerns me is less about connevtivity so much as mental bandwidth, people can do two things at once but the more complex the two things the less well they do it. Anumber of researchers have concluded we are limited such as this; http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4019-multitasking-not-productive.html .

So the worry is that there will be increasingly large numbers of glass related accidents because people are using glass while talking to passengers in the car and glassing while driving, it's no different to using a phone while driving and exerience tells me there are many peole who are unable even to have a conversation safely without veering all over the road.

Apply the above to cyclists, motorcyclists, traindrivers, pedestrians, you will get the picture.

Augmented reality really needs to start at getting our brains to work better.

The scariest thing of all though will be when Faceglass comes out and the world and his dog are spending all day writing on their walls and 'liking' everything.

[Vociferous]

That's just a case of adjusting what is available when. You don't read a book or watch movies while driving now, why would you do so with glass?

Part of Glass' image problem is that it's focused on the wrong things - I'm not interested in watching Youtube while bicycling or updating my facebook status while walking.

On the other hand, having a HUD with GPS should improve, not decrease, safety while driving, and it's not hard to imagine other additions which would be beneficial either, e.g. overlaying transparent IR video when driving at night, or highlighting pedestrians by the road. Glass can't (AFAIK) presently do that, but the technology already exists.

[ecofeco]

> That's just a case of adjusting what is available when. You don't read a book or watch movies while driving now, why would you do so with glass?

Maybe you don't and I don't and the OP doesn't, but you obviously haven't been out in rush hour lately. Or out much at all.

People do all that and more, ALL AT THE SAME TIME. By the thousands.

And that is the problem. Now.

Google the videos of people walking in to, or off of, things, with very real and painful consequences, while just texting.

[ecofeco]

> Augmented reality really needs to start at getting our brains to work better.

Augmented reality needs to augment reality and not distract from it.

But we live in a thoroughly doublespeak, Kafka world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Distracted driving

All you need are a few deadly crashes caused by Glassholes making the news (due to all the Glass hype when they go on sale) and there will be laws passed in many places banning wearing them while driving.

The fact that most people don't read a book while driving is irrelevant. Many read while driving now, even if not books - 140 characters at a time. If enough people have their Twitter and Facebook feeds in the corner of their eyes, they're going to read the updates as they stream by...

[Gene Cash]

Re: Distracted driving

That doesn't matter. Most of the US has laws banning cellphones & driving, and it hasn't done shit.

And I took a taxi about 8 years ago, and the driver READ A PAPERBACK pretty much the entire time she was driving. No tip for her.

[Tom 38]

Re: Distracted driving

And I took a taxi about 8 years ago, and the driver READ A PAPERBACK pretty much the entire time she was driving. No tip for her.

Would you have preferred a hardback?

[stuff and nonesense]

I control my phone..

I don't control a Google glass device owned by someone else...

[Anonymous Coward]

As for privacy: everyone + dog already carry a positioning device with sound and image capture capacity. If you're not worried about cellphones, it's simply irrational to be worried about Glassholes.

I can see when someone is trying to film me - all camera phones need to be angled in a particular way. Not only can I not tell this with Google Glasses (you're only one black marker away from hiding it) but it is also provided by an organisation whose multiple and ongoing appearances in courts all over the globe for privacy violations do not give me a warm happy feeling for what they get up to with Glasses.

I am willing to bet that in half a year from now we will hear that Google has "accidentally" been picking up video footage pretty much 24/7 from Glasses, and they profusely apologise and offer to erase the juicy bits provided you agree to their new T&Cs which state you are now required to wear them in the shower and bathroom as well. Remember, information isn't just useful for stealing IP, it's also very good blackmail material. I suspect that angle hasn't attracted that much attention yet for obvious reasons.

In summary, I don't like Google Glasses, not only because of the type of idiots/Glassholes (delete as applicable) who see this as "cool" but also because the club behind the technology hasn't exactly proven itself to trustworthy in one way or another - ever. It DOES do evil.

Oh, and as for models wearing them - models wear anything, that's what they're paid for. There is an easy counter for that - borrow a pair of Glasses and find the ugliest people possible, make a series with that as a public piss take. I guarantee you that the Vogue episode will go offline quickly, because they cannot handle humour very well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Four and a half grand for a fucking coat? THAT coat?!?

[John Brown (no body)]

My thought exactly. In fact my first thought was that it looked like she was from one of those "World of Tomorrow" type things from the 1950's describing life in the 1980's. Large elevated multi-lane "roads in the sky" and lots of personal helicopter like devices flying around. Or maybe she's just a character from The Jetsons.

[Mike Flugennock]

"Or maybe she's just a character from The Jetsons..."

Jane! HELP! STOP THIS CRAZY THING!

[ecofeco]

Poseurs need to eat too!

[Anonymous Coward]

@moiety

Now, if it had been an Apple iCoat...

[Robinson]

Glassholes.

[Mike Flugennock]

BWUUHHRRBB... oh, 'scuse me, there, guys...

...just had a little Hot Dog Burp Of Disgust, there...

[ElmSocial]

Tech Fashion

I don't know how glass will be accepted into "fashion" as much as just nerdy. I'll wear the HOT smart watch that lets you take private calls (on kickstarter), but I'm not sure about nerding out my face.

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: the Marissa Mayer Vogue profile...

Features her in various poses in designer coture. The one I have seen has her reclining on the children's slide in her back yard. She's getting a little bit of flack for shooting at least some of the spread at her home when she has famously curtailed Yahoo!'s telecommuting policy.

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S.--Raquel Zimmerman looks like a Martian or a dystopian sci-fi villian in that pic.....

Unless she gets her act together, she'll never replace Paris from the lofty heights of el Reg icondom......

[John Smith 19]

To clarify.

As a non blind heterosexual male of course I care not a jot if a women wears spectacles or not as long of course as she can pass the question "Would you?"

It's someone dumb (or narcissistic) enough to want to turn their entire life into a reality TV show.

They would clearly have no concept of either privacy or (data) security.

And I feel I should point out that Mattie has both a spouse and children.

He's said so on several occasions.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Johnnie Thicko Re: To clarify.

".....of course I care not a jot if a women wears spectacles....." That clicking sound in the background is Johnnie backpedalling frantically.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: To clarify.

For fuck's sake - what is it with you guys? Do you realise that you actually just wrote that a woman is only worth anything if she is pretty enough for you to consider having sex with her?

WHAT THE FUCK?!

[gerryg]

It might be a shock to us all but...

...very few people reading Vogue will be checking out nor caring what we think over here.

I remember, about 15-20 years ago, a good friend (still) and avid Vogue reader (still) dismissing email in favour of a hand written note - and assuring me she would never succumb. Today she is an avid user of her phone and tablet; technology that has been fully and innovatively embraced by the fashion industry (paying the wages of some readers here, possibly).

Google Glass? Maybe not, but her children?

(In passing, she also holds down a serious job)

[Benjol]

+1 for the subtitle

I really miss the upvote button for subtitles here.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Outfit most likely to be worn with Google Glass

Short sleeve white polyester shirt; shiny-arsed baggy-kneed grey slacks; ugly tie; black socks; worn-out Clarks shoes; belt with mobile phone holster; big, ugly wristwatch.

Variant: replace short-sleeved shirt with logo-bearing polo short, and slacks with navy-blue cargo-pants

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Outfit most likely to be worn with Google Glass

Ooops - a thumbs down. I think I offended Mr. Polyester-shirt-man

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Outfit most likely to be worn with Google Glass

Twice

[NotMyRealName]

Note the wording

"It was not commissioned". It's called 'product placement', which is something else entirely.