Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Fashion Industry's Surveillance Problem w/ Amy Odell

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Are we living through the dawn of a permanent Surveillance Summer?SUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at usermag.co           Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz     Kylie Jenner is the new face of Meta's AI smart glasses and suddenly, mass surveillance is a fashion trend. Influencers are declaring a "hot surveillance summer," West Village fashion girlies are posting AI glasses selfies, and for thousands of people (not me! lol), cameras on your face have officially gone from creepy to chic. How did we get here?  In this episode, I sit down with iconic fashion journalist Amy Odell, author of the Back Row newsletter covering fashion, culture, and power, to unpack how Big Tech used the fashion industry to normalize wearable surveillance. We trace the full history of smart glasses, from the Google Glass disaster and Snapchat Spectacles vending machines to Ray-Ban Stories, Oakley Meta glasses, and the rhinestone-studded AI glasses taking over your feed. We discuss why the Kylie AI glasses are a turning point for wearable tech, and how this could be the moment personalized AI surveillance becomes permanently woven into public life. Subscribe to Amy's newsletter here: https://www.backrow.net/  We get into: ▸ Why Meta chose Kylie Jenner as the face of its AI glasses campaign ▸ How Mark Zuckerberg rehabbed his image through influencer interviews ▸ The "hot surveillance summer" discourse and why some women are embracing being recorded ▸ How fashion makes surveillance tech palatable — from GoPro to AI hair clips ▸ Meta's facial recognition plans, data harvesting, and what it means for privacy ▸ The Meta Gala, OpenAI's fashion world infiltration, and Snap's $2,000 AR flop ▸ How anti-phone and anti-screen sentiment is fueling the rise of ambient computing, AI pendants, pins, and camera-equipped AirPods ▸ Who actually owns the data Meta's AI glasses collect 

And I think when you turn a camera into a fashion accessory, it makes it palatable to a much, much wider audience of people, particularly women. It would definitely not be cool if she was just sticking a camera on top of her head and filming things. That would be viewed as strange and creepy. 20 years ago, carrying a camera everywhere and snapping photos of everything you did

and everything that was happening around you would have seemed insane and invasive. Today, that behavior is universal. Meta just released their new AI smart glasses, and we might be in a similar moment. Kylie Jenner is chilling the product. We have West Village Girlies and Fashion Lifestyle influencers talking about how great the spectacles are.

And women all over Twitter are talking about how they're about to have a hot surveillance summer. And I think it begs the question, will this summer be the moment where we all kind of accepted this new reality of public life where personalized AI surveillance is completely normalized and integrated into culture? To discuss all of this, I have iconic journalist Amy O'Dell.

She runs the back row newsletter, which covers fashion, culture, and power. Hi, Amy. Welcome to Power User. I'm so excited to be here. So I kind of want to take people back a little bit before talking about the meta glasses and talk about, I guess, surveillance 1.0 tech. I mean, obviously, when we talk about smart glasses, everyone thinks of Google Glass. And it's funny because I was looking back and I never realized that Google Glass couldn't record

anything. I don't think I realize that either. My main memory of Google Glass is just that aesthetically, it was an abominational. And I remember being actually at South by Southwest in the 2010s. And there were a couple people wearing them. We're like, oh, my God, can you believe these people are actually wearing these things? It's funny, though, because they really tried to make it seem fashionable. They put them on like the Diane von Furstenberg runway.

You know, they gave them to the influencers of the time. I feel like it had not a dissimilar rollout to these meta glasses. Maybe it was just the design and functionality, which is not there yet. I actually did try them myself at the time as a tech. reporter, you could kind of get directions, which I found to be useful. They weren't full glasses. They were like these kind of like frames that you put on your face. And then I had like a little like glass square right here. And you know, you could see Google Maps like if you're walking the wrong way to dinner or something, it would just be in front of your face and tell you to go

a different way. I guess that could be useful, but you'd have to wear them. Yeah. Looking back, I think like the functionality was just not there. And the AR kind of idea of using these glasses in the real world, I think it made sense, but I wouldn't have wanted to wear that thing on my face. You know, I could just look down at my phone and see if I was going the wrong way. Yeah, as everyone does when you're walking around, say, New York City. The first glasses that could really record easily were Snapchat spectacles, which launched in 2016. So Snapchat had their own smart glasses. They also did an influencer rollout.

These were kind of clunky black glasses that were very like in style at the time. They look very like 2016. And they had this little yellow circle on the side that could allow you to record and post directly to Snapchat. Oh, right, right, right. They were only $130. To call them smart glasses, I think, is honestly misleading. I had these glasses. I waited in line for these glasses because I wanted to try them out.

And Snapchat was being so particular. Like, they wouldn't give them to reporters out of time. And the only way you could get them was to go to one of these vending machines that they dropped in random places around the country. So they put them on like a college campus. They put them whatever. And they had dropped some vending machines in New York. So anyway, these glasses were just like regular sunglasses. I don't even think they really partnered with some special brand on them.

And they couldn't do anything except be used as sunglasses and record short videos to post on Snapchat. I think you had to record even 15 seconds at a time or whatever the sort of Snapchat limit was. Initially they just came in black. Then they put them in these sort of very 2016 like turquoise, you know, blue color. And they were pretty viral, I would say, at the time, but they also just looked corny. And I feel like they never really took off with the right crowd. They didn't take off. I don't remember them taking off in fashion.

Incidentally, at the time that these came out, I was working at Hearst. And we had a partnership with Snapchat where we would sort of funnel our content into Snapchat. And they had different publishers with different tiles in the app. And you could tap on one and see Cosmopolitan or whoever else was in or Vogue, maybe whoever else was in there. And I think at the time, Kylie Jenner was really, blowing up on Snapchat, right? Yes, but they didn't get her for the campaign. They really didn't

have influencers a part of this campaign. They tried to do the like exclusivity route where I think they like made it really hard to get. Not everyone could have them. So there was a little bit of virality for a minute because it was like a status symbol for maybe three days. And then immediately after they dropped these like vending machines all over, people started buying them and just reselling them online and they just didn't, I think, look that cool. They also had this giant yellow circle on the side and this big light and I don't know, they were kind of corny. Yeah, I don't think they look cool. I don't remember them being a thing in the fashion realm. And it doesn't surprise me that they didn't foster widespread adoption for aesthetics. The only time that I used them, I remember I was actually

covering a Trump rally. And I had a Snapchat show at the time because that's the era that we were in covering the election. And I remember being actually, I think it was at the Trump building, whatever, but it was this rally, this press conference he was doing. And I was trying to type on my phone and file notes, but I also had to get video footage. And I was like, oh, I have these spectacle things. So I would just like tap. I think you had to click them or something as well, but I would just continually tap it. And then while I was doing that type, yeah, file my story. And I guess it was kind of useful, but just pretty clunky. Nobody really wanted them. I guess you can buy them even now today on eBay, but they're really a relic of the past.

To me, the, the, when I think of, like, the tool that normalized surveillance in the physical world in the 2010s, I actually think of GoPro. GoPro never put out any sort of, like, smart glasses or anything like that, but I do feel like it had this sort of, like, community around it, especially related to extreme sports, where people would, like, bring GoPro's places, you know, put the GoPro on their helmet while like mountain biking down a road, kind of a lot of the early use cases that you saw with the original meta glasses that just did record it.

Yeah, skiing. I mean, I see that all the time. But it's funny, I think because GoPro always stuck to kind of like the sports realm and kind of being like, hey, this is what you can do in extreme activities. Like, it would have been weird to take a GoPro around to like your brunch in the West Village or something. Right. That doesn't make sense.

I have a GoPro and I used it to try to film snorkeling. And that's the only time I've used it. And then I'm like, why did we buy this? But it seemed fun at the time to have it. Yeah, I do think it got people thinking about recording themselves doing, like, interesting activities. But it wasn't cool. These things were clunky.

Gophros are ugly. They certainly were never being put into glasses or wearables in the same way. They're also marketed as gear. Like, if you're going camping, it's part of your gear. And you can buy this particular handle for it or a strap around your wrist. But it's really all about gear. It's like REI. branding. So in 2021, Meta releases its first pair of Rayban smart glasses. And they partner with

Rayban. They kind of mimic this like original Wayban, Wayfair, shape. And these glasses can't do anything but record. And they're sort of like the Snapchat spectacles for meta. They were actually called Rayban Stories because it would allow you to post Instagram stories or Facebook stories. And I feel like very quickly, people just started using them to like kind of harass and surveil others. Yeah, I don't really recall personally being so conscious of these in the fashion realm until a couple of years ago. I mean, I remember they looked kind of normal. Like, they looked almost like normal ray bands. They had a slightly chunkier arm, I guess you could call it.

And, you know, they had microphones. They had directional speakers. It had Bluetooth. But it wasn't until 2023 when they added live streaming that I feel like it really took off. Because, again, like the worst people in the world just started to use these glasses. to go around and harass people. I feel like they're known as like the pickup artist's glasses where like people were just using these

to do man on the street interviews and to like ris up girls without them knowing and then, you know, mock them on the internet. Yeah, I mean, that's really repulsive. But those early iterations that you could tell that there were cameras, like if you looked closely, you can see, right, that there was like a camera on one side of the eye and the other side of the eye.

And so the rayband design is perfect for that. Yeah, they had like this little light, although you could buy a little sticker and cover it pretty easily. It wasn't as overt as the Snapchat spectacles where you had this like circular kind of like light thing going around. They weren't hideous looking. I think it was more like people didn't like them because of how they were being used more than like,

I don't like the way these look. You know, it was more like, oh, if you're wearing these, you're a creep because you're probably using it to film women without their consent. Yeah, in the use case to me is still not abundantly clear. Do you know what I mean? Like if you're not one of those creepy guys, on the street trying to antagonize women. Why do I need these? Exactly. And I feel like meta

starts to really answer that question in 2025 because 2025 is when they make a few changes. Number one, they partner with Oakley. They release the Oakley meta glasses, which is, I would say, going more into that GoPro area of like focusing on sports and sort of performance lifestyle influencers, people that are out and about being like, are you living this crazy life that you want to record? You know, use these Oakley's and the Oakley's I thought looked cool. Those Oakley glasses are kind of like back in the moment. And these were the company's first AI glasses. They didn't have the full AI capability that we have now,

but it was, they were beginning to integrate AI into the glasses for the first time. Yeah, I was in preparing for this podcast, just looking at Mark Zuckerberg's recent Instagram posts. And he posted a video of himself in a race. He's running and he's wearing the glasses and they look on him kind, you know, kind of dorky. They're like blue and reflective and quite large. But then the idea was, look at this race I ran. And then, you know, you can see. see what I see and here's the person next to me, blah, blah. Yeah, I feel like the Oakleys were like

going into the GoPro area. I mean, I guess you could talk to it like in a rudimentary way. It's nothing like the ones they just released. So now I feel like 2026 meta has gone like full on in on glasses. They've released a slew of new styles. I feel like the most popular style are those kind of, what are they called? They're like the small petite glasses, I guess. Yes, Starfire that have a rhinestone on the side. According to Mark Zuckerberg's post, Kylie really wanted that and she really wanted a rhinestone embedded into one side. Okay, so 2026, we have a rhinestone embedded. I would say, like, low profile smart glasses that have AI enabled in, like, integrated in

every way. And the selling point to me has changed now to AI, where it's not as much about, like, you can record this. It's more like, hey, now your AI assistant can see everything you can see in this really discrete way. Like, I feel like part of the reason these glasses took off all. also is because of this new design where it is really low profile. Like they don't look clunky.

No, they look pretty good. I feel like this change, though, of selling smart glasses as a recording mechanism first, like, yes, it's recording, but that's secondary because the real purpose is AI has kind of allowed a lot more people to get on board with this idea of mass surveillance and get on board with the idea of smart glasses. There are people posting about these classes that I feel like I would have never guessed. So let's talk about the rollout a little bit. Who was the first influencer that you saw Shillingleys on the timeline?

I actually think it was Mark Zuckerberg himself in his Instagram videos. I saw it on Twitter. There's a bunch of like kind of, I would call them, like, West Village fashion girly types that are getting into this. Emily Sundberg, who's very popular newsletter writer, influencer, sort of, I would say that writes this newsletter that a lot of girls like that read. It's sort of this like newsletter for like upwardly mobile like business girlies in New York City. It is very New York centric. She did a sit down with Mark. Zuckerberg that got a lot of, you know, discussion going. People were like, oh, my God. Well, I think that this

also points to the decline of fashion media as well, that Zuckerberg went to complex and he went to Feed Me and he gave interviews to them. And I don't know that he did another formal sort of sit-down interview. The Feed-Me interview was interesting. It sort of got some backlash like a couple days after it came out because she asks her readers to submit questions for prominent people and business owners to answer. And as the newsletter status later reported, people proposed some pretty probing questions, but Emily Sundberg basically indicated to her audience that she knew that she wasn't going to get Mark Zuckerberg to answer those questions. She revealed to status that the subjects were able to, or at least Mark Zuckerberg, was able to go through the list of

questions that she put forth to them and pick the ones to answer. And status, has made the point that I think is important that this is not how a journalist would conduct an interview. And it gives a lot of control to Meta and to Mark Zuckerberg. And that's how you get him, you know, this hugely influential, controversial person. And that's how you get him answering a question. Like, what is your ideal lunch, chicken tenders? So that was sort of the tenor of the interview. It was like fun and light.

But like, there's a lot to ask this man. And he easily avoided being asked it. Yeah. And it is worth noting that people always can choose the questions that they answer with her guest lecture series. So it's not like she necessarily changed her guidelines, you know, for Mark Zuckerberg, but I do think that this is a safe space. And also it's worth noting that Emily worked at meta for a while. So she was working at meta. I think it was right before or in the beginning of building FeedMe. So, you know, this is her old boss effectively. I don't think she's going to come out like swinging for

the fences because if you've already made the moral calculation to work at meta, you're probably not the kind of person that's going to like question Zuckerberg really hard. And there's few people who get access, who do, you know, really fiercely question people in this day and age. I mean, that's how access works. Public figures, they don't need, they don't need the media anymore. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or by a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.com. That's usermag. I don't have any long-term brand partnerships and a lot of my content is effectively demonetized. I've lost major brand deals for speaking out on certain issues and for challenging power.

As you can imagine, advertisers are not exactly eager to work with somebody who covers a lot of the topics that I cover and talks about the things that I talk about. These videos I make are entirely funded by you and I can't continue to make them without your support. So if you get any value out of the videos that I create and you want me to be able to create more, please support me on Patreon or Substack via the links below. On Patreon, I do bonus episodes, monthly Q&A live streams and post frequent updates about my work. My substack newsletter gives you a bi-weekly roundup of everything that I'm seeing and reading

and paying attention to online. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon. Once again, the links to everything are below in the description. Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. And then Mark Zuckerberg also sat down with the former editor-in-chief of Complex. Yeah, so I saw Zuckerberg showing off the glasses on Instagram and talking about Kylie Jenner partnering with them, and he called her a fashion icon. I saw the clips. I did not see. I see him calling her a fashion icon, but that's hilarious because I feel like she's not. Well, the snarky sort of like fashion world chatter is like, oh, really? So I saw that in him talking about the gem.

What stood out to me as a fashion journalist is he was talking about how this is glasses first, tech second, and how this has to be a product that you want to wear because you like how it looks. And then the technology has to be embedded into that type of a product, which I think he's exactly right. I hate to say that he's right, but he is. These things are not going to sell if they look like the snap specs of 2016 or Google Glass. Well, you know what's so funny to me about this is that every single like influencer on the planet has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg. Like I think Colin and Samir had him on.

This man does influencer interviews 24-7. And I think the only reason that there's like a status article and discourse about Emily Sundberg is because Emily is seen as New York City media adjacent. Well, yeah, the complex interview. I did note. I'm glad you pointed that out because I don't think the complex review got really like a hard look at it. I think like let's take a hard look at that too. Yeah. So she's going to be put under scrutiny that like look, we should be asking these hard

questions. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like why was Cleo Abram who used to work at Vox, like not subject to the same, you know. Yeah, that's interesting. I did not know that that was his strategy was to just sort of speak selectively to influencers. But that's really interesting. I mean, that's a blueprint for other people. Well, that's a big way that he's been able to rehab his image. So with the whole, he really started doing it around, you know, when he grew out his hair and Gen Z curls, yeah. That is when he started to really go into these online spaces. It's also when he started to talk more about content creators, right? This is like, and they got into sort of the creator economy stuff.

And I think Zuckerberg also recognized the role that influencers are playing in political world. And he's trying to, you know, he does these partnerships and goes and speaks with just so ever growing list of content creators, none of whom ask him any hard questions, none of whom really, you know, press. him on any of this stuff. So not to excuse, you know, maybe a softball interview in Feed Me, but he's going into this like well established format in that newsletter and participating in it. And yeah. And this is the internet that he wanted to create and he created it. And I think it makes it it it's really smart for him to talk to creators because his products exist in opposition to legacy media that he's avoiding. And so, you know, he could also spin it as like, I'm promoting these, these creators who are making my platforms interesting.

So it's really smart. I want to dig into the Kylie of it all. Why do you think they chose her? Like, was it a situation where they couldn't get Kim? Is Kim seem like out of date? I mean, when you talk about fashion icon, I guess I think of Kim more in the fashion world than Kylie. Is it just that Kylie's Gen Z?

Like, why do you think she was chosen specifically as the face of this campaign? I would assume it's because she has probably younger fans. And maybe also because she has that Snapchat era clout, which helped her attract all these younger. fans. So I think if they're looking for adoption among young women in particular, which is how a lot of this technology takes off, right? Like how did Instagram become successful? How did Snapchat become successful? I think if they're looking for widespread adoption among young women and they're looking

for a broadly recognizable name who kind of has one foot in the fashion world, but also one foot in sort of the very mass realm in which the Hulu show exists and in which Kylie Lipkits exist, I think that's how you end up with someone like Kylie. It's also possible they went to Chris Jenner's birthday party and they really hit it off with her. Who really knows? But I would guess it's the mass appeal and her ability to straddle a very, very mass audience, you know, spanning the entire country, but also appealing to people on the coasts. Yeah, it's funny to think of like just all the eras that Kylie has had. I mean, you mentioned she was the original kind of Snapchat influencer.

It's also just like, we've got Kylie Schilling, you know, meta-AI smart glasses. We've got Timothy Shalameh shilling, Kalshi. It feels like celebrities are just, I don't want to say nihilus, but like, there is certainly no concern over this. Like the backlash that I saw some of these influencers getting was so much more significant than the response on the Kylie Jenner Post where people mostly seem excited. Like, wow, this is really cool. Like, I want these.

But I do think, like, no one is holding the Kardashians to a higher standard. You know what I mean? everyone expects them to sell out. That's kind of like their whole brand. I also think that she's a celebrity that could do this partnership and not get the same kind of backlash as other celebrities where like, you know, maybe if the celebrities have been outspoken against ICE or some of these other things, right? Like there would be more sort of cultural conversation because ICE has been using META's

smart glasses previously to surveil immigrants and, you know, protesters, et cetera. And actually ICE is developing their own smart glasses as well that have facial recognition. So I don't know. I just was thinking of other celebrities and like the conversations and I didn't see that discourse around, Kylie. Well, I think the car generis are known to be politically apathetic. I think the main thing they stand for to me is capitalism. Getting the brand deals, buying into capitalist beauty norms like this very expensive plastic surgery that we see everywhere all the time, particularly on meta products. That's what they stand for to me is that certain aesthetic and just kind of making money. and getting their images everywhere and being famous and just more, more, more. So I want to talk about sort of the mass surveillance aspect of it all,

because I think the reason people have been so hesitant to get on board, rightfully so, with the rise of smart glasses, is this fact that they record everything or that people record like moments, right, surreptitiously that you wouldn't know, and that's socially unacceptable. But it seems like it's becoming more and more acceptable. I mean, I think phones have normalized content. constant recording in ways that people have not really processed yet. Everyone already records everything from concerts at restaurants.

They're recording strangers. They're recording people on the street. They're recording anything funny that they see. And so I feel like the stigma around recording things, IRL, has actually been lowered a lot by phones already to the point that maybe putting glasses in there, like, doesn't matter as much. And live streaming, which is, I guess, the new thing. I'm too old for that.

but clavicular. He's a live stream celebrity. So that's going to be the next wave. And I think Kylie, she is that because she's probably the most popular Carjender on TikTok because she'll just film. And that's what she was doing on Snapchat. Right. It's about just like surveilling the world around you already recording things. And I feel like so if mass recording is already normalized, but just on the phone, it's not a big deal if that camera just moves from your phone to your face.

Natasha, who's a popular tech influencer and co-host the podcast Boys Club World did a post that went kind of viral on Twitter talking about this stuff, where she basically said that this is going to be a hot surveillance summer. And everyone should get on board with mass surveillance. To care about mass surveillance is lame. To care about not being recorded as lame. And people were mad, but a lot of girls in the replies are also excited. This one girl, Natalie Frato replied to her saying,

I bought those glasses so fast yesterday. Three cheers to surveillance summer. I'm not sorry. I mean, if you're going to Coachella and you're wearing them, that's one thing. If you are crossing the street in Brooklyn and there's a string of toddlers in front of you, I think that's really another thing, you know, like a string of toddlers walking to a school bus or going on a field trip, you know, like we saw Miramam Donnie recently walking with very little children down the street in one of his videos, you know. So I particularly get uncomfortable with it around children.

Yeah, which unfortunately kids are just. out in the world in New York City especially. I feel like it's just, I don't know, it's interesting to hear people be pro surveillance. I don't know if you saw this on Instagram a little while ago. This girl went viral. She's kind of like a hacker, indie hacker person where she made this clip.

And she actually, I think, flew to Shenzhen to create the prototype. She made a hair clip. And she was like, it's surveillance for the girlies. Like, this is about a year ago when the meta smart glasses were still affiliated with live streamer kind of trolls. And she was like, I want to take pictures. I want a video record.

everything in my life for memories. So I made this cute clip and it's a hair fashion accessory and it can, you know, allow us to record. And again, there was a little backlash, but a lot of excitement as well from other women that were like, actually, this is so fun. I want this. I want to wear this and take it to, you know, to the beach with my friends or on a fun girls trip or whatever. Yeah, I think fashion is a way to make things palatable in the way that turning GoPro into gear makes it palatable to that demo. And I think when you turn a camera into a fashion accessory, it makes it palatable to a much, much wider audience of people,

particularly women. It would definitely not be cool if she was just sticking a camera on top of her head and filming things. That would be viewed as strange and creepy. It's about aesthetics. And I do think there's something to the plausible deniability aspect, though, with the AI, where it's like, well, it's not just for surveillance. Because if it's just for surveillance, you seem weird, right?

I mean, it's even when you think about it with your phone, right? Like, you have your phone out all the time because you're using your phone 24-7 for things. And so it's easy to record stuff around you, but you're not holding that phone in order to record everything around you. And I think these glasses, what makes these glasses feel different and I think makes people feel like it's okay to get on board with the surveillance part is like, well, it's about giving your AI access to your entire world. And it's about surveilling everything for your benefit, right? so that it can track where you go, who you're with, what you're doing, et cetera, and optimize your life. And to me, that's just a much, much stronger selling point. Because if it's just about surveillance, it's kind of, I mean, I know that they're trying

to make surveillance cool and talk about surveillance summer. But I feel like the point is, is that these glasses offer more than surveillance. And that's why I think they're going to break through. Are we going to find out how many they sell? I don't know if we have sales numbers yet. I don't think we do. And who knows what the company has to report versus not, you know, on their next earn. I feel like if they had any data to share that was good,

it would be out there. Like, the way movie studios, if they have a show that's a hit, they come up with a number that they can push out, that's like, this is the most streamed, limited drama series on FX ever. And it's like, you can always come up with a number. So I'm not seeing anything yet. But yeah, I don't know.

I do think that the glasses, like, they look good. I think they look fine. I think they'll work on a lot of different people. I could see them being adopted. I guess I'm skeptical because, you know, meta doesn't really have original ideas. They just kind of steep. or they acquire, and that's where their success comes from.

Listen, I think even if they aren't the biggest commercial success for META, because I think META is such a complicated company with so many different crazy revenue streams, and it's hard to tie the launch of one product even to something like their stock price because they do all these other things. I think it's clear that META's leaning into AI. Obviously, they're going that way. They're competing with all these other big tech companies. It's clear that AI is the new frontier.

Personalized AI is incredibly popular with women. the way that most women use AI now is for personal optimization of their life. If you can convince women that these glasses look cool, they look fun, Kylie Jenner's wearing them, all these other girly influencers are wearing them. And it's going to help optimize your life. Like, I do think that this is a sea change moment where like once women get on board with something, kind of like you mentioned earlier, like, and they seem fashionable and cool, especially young, cool women, that item just becomes integrated into the cultural fabric.

And I do think that that's what we're seeing, even if they don't sell as many as they hope. Maybe not everyone has $300 to spare. It has provided this, I would say, like, socially acceptable reason to have the glasses on, which is like, I'm smart. I'm using AI. I'm optimizing my life. Yeah, I don't have to have my phone out when I'm crossing the street. I saw a lot of influencers who I see sort of day-to-day doing red carpet commentary or talking about fashion news. They were doing paid marketing with their glasses. So they would take them out and put them on and then, you know, get ready. with me for Blah. Or they were at the party in New York City where Mark Zuckerberg was taking

pictures with Kylie Jenner and Eva Chen, who runs fashion partnerships for them. There was one that I shared on my Instagram where they all had the glasses on, they were getting photographed, and then as soon as the photographing stops, they all took them off. But people at the party were using the glasses to like film an interaction with Zuckerberg. You know, a benign interaction. No one was asking really interesting or provocative. of questions, let's say, but he was, you know, fine with that. Like they had curated the room. This is a very fashion industry thing to do.

You know, you curate your guest list. You create the people who are around. And that kind of says something about your brand, but it also controls what people are saying online. So I think they did that really, really successfully. And I think the rollout went really, really well. Yeah, I think it's been really effective. I also wonder if they're going to sort of tap in more

and more to this anti-screen sentiment. I've written a lot about this, but in the past few years, being hyper online has been incredibly stigmatized. It has negative correlation. People are really angry at tech's intrusion into our lives, which is, I think, what's leading some of the backlash to these glasses. But wearing these glasses is also a way to kind of stay present almost and not be on your phone and be out in the world.

And I think people are taking these places that they might not want to bring their phone with them or whatever. And so I just, yeah, I just want to. I wonder as people want to get away from this like form factor of having this little like rectangle, you know, screen in your pocket, if they'd be more willing to use the glasses. I mean, I talked to a friend recently who's thinking of getting them. You mentioned kids because she's like, oh, I hate having my phone out in front of my kids. But I'd love to, you know, be able to record moments and have this AI assistant help me, you know, answer questions throughout the day. And my child won't have to see me on my phone.

And I think that that, especially for moms, seems like something that would be appealing to a certain demographic. Yeah, and Zuckerberg is leaning into that. So I did watch his interview for Complex. And one of the stories he told was about how he was wearing the glasses when he was baking with his daughter. And he's like, I'm not really good at baking,

but the glasses could tell me, oh, don't do that. And that feels like a very carefully cherry-picked story. Like, you can use these to make your home life better even though, you know, I have little kids and I feel like the battle is to have less tech so that we can be present together, not only for their benefit, but for my benefit too. Like when I look back on this time with my children, I don't want to look back on it like, God, I spent a way too much time on Instagram, you know? Yeah, but if you had these glasses on and it's just whispering in your ear like, hey, put a little more extra water in the dough, like, is that less intrusive than having the phone out, you know? Well, I'm a better baker and home chef than Mark Zuckerberg. So I don't I feel like I would really need that. But there's my personal view, like for my own life, I don't want more tech. I want less. I bought a brick in effort to have less tech.

I just have to set it up. I do think that these wearables and these sort of like ambient computing devices are going to succeed specifically because of the anti-tech movement. And I'm not saying that like you are going to end up in that realm. Well, I probably will. I mean, if everybody is using it, like you probably will just end up using it, right? It's like AI. Like if you're not using AI right now, you're going to be slow.

where and you're going to fall behind. So I recognize that, but I personally, I'm not dying to have these. Only out of curiosity, do I want to see, like, what they're like. The other thing about them, too, is like, if you don't wear glasses, how appealing are they? If you're not used to wearing glasses day to day or if you don't need to, or if you buy the sunglasses, like, you're going to wear sunglasses inside all the time. I think, like, sunglasses, launching them in the summer, I think people wear sunglasses a lot more. Obviously, they're normalized compared to glasses. Also, more and more people need glasses after looking at our screens all day. But I, I think Even, okay, put the glasses aside because I think the glasses are sort of the beginning of this broader move towards ambient technology in the world around us.

Like I do think that this is why the panic over screens and the dumb phones and everything is kind of dumb because like we are getting AI pendants. We're getting AI pins. There's an AI pen. There's, you know, whatever Johnny Ive is cooking up at OpenAI, which is some sort of ambient computing device. Also, it was just announced that Apple is putting cameras into AirPods. which are able to record the world around you and leverage that, you know, for AI. So I just think that people are becoming more comfortable with these computing devices because they are so angry at the phone.

There is so much backlash to the phone. And I just wonder if we're going to look back at this moment and be like, God, remember when cameras were constrained to this, like, brick thing that you were to, like, hold up and everyone could see you were filming? And remember when you could, like, put it away, right? Instead of just having these things that, like, live on you all day. Yeah, I think you're right, but I also don't think the anti-tech sentiment is going to go away. No, I think it's going to get worse.

Yeah, it'll become more polarized, right? Yeah, it's going to be polarized. I think people are the huge hypocrites, though. And again, I think like the anti-screen sentiment is already driving people to adopt these glasses. It will drive people to adopt, you know, even with the, I can't remember the name of the pin, but there was this AI smart pin that launched that was a huge flop. I shouldn't even put them on blast. But people that were reviewing the product were like, I wanted to wear this pin.

wanted to like it because I hate having my phone with me. It feels like this ball and chain. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true. And I'll be curious to see how they try to force these glasses on even younger people. I mean, getting a 24-year-old West Village girl to wear them and brag about them on social media is one thing. Getting them into a third grade classroom or in the hands of teachers and saying that there's some benefit there is another thing. I don't think they're going to put them in the teachers. I don't think they're putting them in the classroom. I don't think that is going to get into ed tech right now, especially because there's like so much drama over that. Well, it'll be interesting to see if they put them on like ballerina

farm. They probably will. Why not? They have endless money. They can pay anybody. Alex Earl, Alex Cooper, all the Alexes. Yeah. And I think a lot of influencers that seem a little bit more like low tech or whatever, like maybe trad wifey, they're already talking about AI. These people are already doing AI deals. I mean, when I did a story about leading the future, one of the the pro AI super PACs paying off women lifestyle influencers. It was a lot of like moms, like sort of living traditional lives and saying like, oh, you know, AI helps me optimize XYZ. AI helps me whatever, whatever. So again, I think it's like those people, their enemy is the screen and this idea of like screens and feeds. But for whatever reason, they don't seem as angry about AI.

And I wonder what influencer partnerships they'll be building next. I think if people can become a little bit savvier to all the places that AI is manifesting, you know, maybe the backlash will foment a little bit more. I've covered data privacy a lot. And it seems like, I mean, all of this stuff makes me so sad because people are like, well, at least, you know, we're already being surveilled. We're being surveilled 24-7 by flock cameras, by CCTV, by other people. At least this is putting surveillance back in my hands. And this is what Natasha was arguing with her surveillance summer post is like, well, this is personal surveillance. I get to

surveil others. And like, this data belongs to me. But the data doesn't belong to you. The data belongs to meta. And I'm really concerned about these big tech companies and the amount of data that they're harvesting on the world around us. And just think of like they've already surveilled so much of our online behavior. I'm worried that this is going to just give them access to like just an obscene level of like new data about people's lives offline. I completely share that concern. Your audience, I know they're, you know, very plugged in. But I think it's hard for the average person to really conceive of how much data these companies have about us. So I definitely sure you're concerned. I think meta is at the forefront of normalizing this sort of like

ambient computing in smart glasses, whatever, but again, we're getting pins, pendants, et cetera. I don't think we're having a strong enough conversation around data privacy. And I don't think people realize the implications of this. I mean, that New York Times report came out a couple months ago reporting that meta was already working on building facial recognition technology into their glasses. And it was unreleased. Metas actually pulled back on the project after backlash, but you know where this is going. And it's not a pretty place. Like, it's a very scary authoritarian place. And I think if we're going to keep building out this technology, we need to start having these conversations of like, who does this data belong to? What can it be

used for? And how do we ensure that it's not being used against us? Yeah. And I think these are really dark and sinister conversations. And I think that's why it's even more urgent, you know, to reiterate points that you previously made on my back row podcast. That's why it's urgent that people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos appear in fashion spaces. That's why they want to be at the Met Gala. Well, now we know that Mark Zuckerberg was at the Mech Gala because he was working on this big fashion project. Maybe that's where he got the idea to have Kylie Jenner do this.

You know, that's kind of the whole point of the mech Gala. It's a big networking event. So Anna Winter puts people together who can meet one another and say, oh, I'm going to put this model who sat next to me in my cosmetics campaign or whatever it may be. But I think that them, you know, curating this rollout of these glasses, making it seem really glamorous, really fun, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's out of party with Kylie Jenner. They're taking mirror selfies or glasses selfies, I guess, maybe the new mirror selfies. I think that that really helps kind of tamp down awareness of these other issues that you're talking about, that you would really have to seek out coverage of that in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or your newsletter. Because Vogue is not having that discussion.

These influencers who are going to the party, they're not having that discussion. They're like, you know, what pants are you wearing? Or whatever they asked Mark Zuckerberg. Well, you know who else was at the Met Gala this year? Was Charles Porch, who is the former head of partnerships. I don't know if it's fair to call him a fashion person. He's definitely a celebrity person.

But he's in the world. He's in that world, for sure. Like Derek Blasberg. He's kind of like in that vein. Exactly. And now Charles Porch left Meta to go to Open AI, I build out their celebrity partnerships. And yeah, he's in these spaces, too,

just as Open AI is potentially, you know, launching this. I think this is a really good foreshadowing of what we can expect from Open AI because Open AI has been throwing money at the Costume Institute and the MacGala for years now. They got their tech integrated. It was honestly goofy. And I remember going to the press preview

and sharing a laugh with some other journalists there about it. But in the Sleeping Beauty's exhibition at the Costume Institute, I believe this was two years ago, two or three years ago. The idea was to showcase gowns that are so delicate, you can't even put them on mannequins. They have to be lying down in glass cases. And then they used OpenAI to generate imagery of what the gowns would look like if they were active and moving.

But it was just sort of ghostly and strange. They had screens with this. And there were other integrations of OpenAI in the exhibition that were called out. But I'm sure they threw, well, maybe, you know, to them, I'm sure it's chump change. but for the costume institute, it's probably like, you know, great amount of money. But they were there, and I want to say at this press preview, one of the executives from OpenAI spoke, like they had a very glamorous female executive. I forget her name.

She spoke. And it seemed like it somehow made sense. They got an article in the Wall Street Journal about this. So they've been working at this for years. Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year. Someone else said that last year, too. A round of James and Ginger and Lime arrives at the table.

smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time. New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball. Cheers rising like a roar around the room. Because match days are about the shared moments. How did Jameson to your match day lineup? Jameson, it's what you bring. Please enjoy our products responsibly.

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny to think of this as we look at this next generation of tech companies and big tech and Bezos and all these people to look back at Snapchat because of course right around the same time as these meta glasses launch, we had Evan Spiegel come out with his clunky, $2,000 AR glasses. I think these were universally received as a flop.

And I think it's another testament to kind of what you've been talking about, which is that like, unless these things look cool and unless they're seen as fashion forward, nobody wants them. And I feel like the good news about the Evan Spiegel AR smart glasses, which are, I think AR is even more kind of bizarre than some of this AI stuff because it's like alter. your actual worldview.

But nobody wants them because they're ugly and clunky and nobody cool is wearing them. And he looked phenomenally dorky in them on CNBC. He just did. And he was, I think, pretty roundly mocked on the internet. And it was sort of funny because they had Stephen Miselle photographed the campaign. They had Kaya Gerber in the campaign.

Stephen Mizzle, I would say, is probably the most legendary fashion photographer ever up there with Avedon. I mean, I'm sure. A lot of people would say he's better, but he's a legendary photographer. I'm sure he's very expensive to do commercial work like that. But he's regarded as the best in the business. So if you want to do a magazine cover, any type of fashion campaign, if you're working with him, I would say you're guaranteed an amazing result.

He's the photographer who like the supermodels always want to work with. And they always talk about how he gets the best out of them. It's funny because even with all these fashion partnerships, even with Kaya Gerber, or even, you know, getting the best fashion photographer in the world, like, if you have an ugly, clunky product that I think reminds people of the technology, people don't want it. Like, the fact is, is that like these pins or these glasses or whatever tech, you don't look at them knowing that they're a piece of technology.

And I think that that is still what people want. They don't want visible tech on their body. It's just still looks too nerdy. But they just looked like they were designed by the people who came up with VHS tapes, you know. They were so clunky. They did not look modern. And they had some of that. I guess maybe it was a party or, you know, whatever type of event you do,

where Evan Spiegel, who's married to Miranda Kerr, who's a supermodel and a Victoria's Secret Angel, they were wearing them and, you know, like posing seriously and trying to look cool. And they didn't look great in that context either. They looked really clunky. Yeah. I think they're just not ready for primetime. And who knows what Snap is doing? Like, they really miss the AI boat so bad.

Do you think he were a grubes? That's not selling to Meta. Well, I respect him for not selling to Meta because Meta just like will drive anyone out of the business. As you mentioned earlier, like all Mark Zuckerberg does his copy. I think that would have been the best business decision for Snap. But I don't know. I mean, it's just interesting.

Like they've been so focused on pushing AR forward and augmented reality. And I think the real augmented reality is going to be an AI agent in our ear. I think you're right. Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining me today. I always count on you to anytime there's anything like fashion tech, anything, I'm like, I have to get Amy online. So I really appreciate you joining me today. Oh, thank you. Likewise.

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