How Google and DVF Brought Google Glass to the Runway

Why Google Chose New York Fashion Week to Introduce Glass to a Wider Audience

Google Glass was not yet publicly available when the DVF collaboration launched. The strategic logic was precise: anchor an unfamiliar technology to a world where aesthetics, identity, and aspiration are already deeply encoded in the audience. New York Fashion Week provided cultural authority that no product launch event could manufacture independently.

Diane von Furstenberg's brand stood as a natural counterpart. Her position in American fashion — as both a working designer and an institutional figure — gave the collaboration credibility on both sides of the fashion-technology divide. As reported by Vision Monday, von Furstenberg stated: 'I am so excited to introduce Glass to the fashion world and use this revolutionary technology to give everyone a unique perspective into fashion.' The partnership was not incidental; it was structural to how Google intended Glass to be perceived.

The electronics market in the United States provided additional context for the timing. According to thedailyrecord.com, US consumer electronics sales declined two percent in 2012, a contraction that made differentiation through cultural positioning more valuable than conventional retail promotion. Within that environment, wearable technology represented an entirely new category — one that required a different kind of introduction. The DVF Through Glass campaign addressed that need by demonstrating Glass through lived experience rather than specification sheets. In the United States, where fashion media and technology media increasingly overlap in digital publishing, the campaign was positioned to reach both audiences simultaneously through a single piece of content released on YouTube and Google+.

Filming the DVF Spring 2013 Show Through Google Glass: The Creative Execution

The entire film is shot from the first-person point of view of the people wearing Google Glass. Viewers see what Diane von Furstenberg sees as she moves through the backstage environment, what the models see as they prepare and walk the runway, and what the stylists see as they work in the final minutes before the show begins. There are no conventional camera angles, no cutaways to audience reaction, and no interviewer-to-subject framing — only the raw, mobile, eye-level perspective that Glass itself produces.

The footage captures the tension and rhythm of a live fashion production: the crowded backstage corridors, the controlled urgency of a team dressing models under time pressure, and the sudden transition from preparation to performance as the runway begins. When the show opens and models walk, the audience sees the runway from the model's own vantage point — an angle fashion imagery had not previously made available at scale.

Film editing was handled by David Etkin, with graphics by Rich Pernice. Music licensing was managed by MAS Music and Strategy, with executive production by James Alvich. The soundtrack draws on two distinct tracks: 'Elephant' by Tame Impala, released through Modular Recordings, and 'Dance' by Rebecca and Fiona, released through Ultra Records, Inc. As documented by redcottoncandy.com, the production company involved in the project was Greenpoint Pictures. The music selection — urgent, textured, contemporary — reinforces the film's energy without competing with the visual intimacy that Glass footage creates. The combination of editorial pacing and first-person footage produces a document that functions simultaneously as a product demonstration and as a genuine piece of fashion filmmaking.

DVF Through Glass Campaign Impact and What the Collaboration Demonstrated for Google

No verified performance data for DVF Through Glass is publicly available in terms of view counts, conversion metrics, or measured shifts in brand perception. What the public record does confirm is the scope of the campaign's distribution and the calibre of its participants. As reported by ABC News and the NY Daily News, the collaboration was covered extensively at the time of the September 2012 New York Fashion Week show, with Sergey Brin's presence on the runway alongside von Furstenberg generating significant editorial attention in both fashion and technology press.

The structural effectiveness of the campaign rests on several decisions that remain instructive. First, the choice to restrict all footage to Glass itself removed any ambiguity about what the technology could do — the film is simultaneously the demonstration and the deliverable. Second, distribution through Google's own YouTube channel and the DVF Google+ page connected the campaign to Google's own platform ecosystem, ensuring the content reinforced Google's digital infrastructure as much as its hardware. Third, the hashtag #DVFthroughGlass, as documented by The Verge and smithsonianmag.com, gave the campaign a searchable identity across social platforms at a moment when hashtag-driven campaigns were still relatively new as a primary organisational mechanism. As noted by Sergey Brin in Vision Monday, the collaboration reflected Google's view that 'beauty, style and comfort are as important to Glass as the latest technology' — a positioning statement the film itself was designed to prove.