Google Glass to get cool injection thanks to Ray-Ban and Oakley

It has just been revealed that Google has signed a deal with Luxottica, the company behind brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley and Burberry, to design versions of its achingly geeky really cool and hip spectacles – Google Glass.

A statement on the Luxottica website reveals it “will join forces to design, develop and distribute a new breed of eyewear for Glass” and name drops both Ray-Ban and Oakley as the pioneering brands – of course the latter is a natural fit given it’s already ventured into the wearables market a number of times in the past.

“The partnership between Google and Luxottica is one of the first examples of a multidisciplinary approach to wearable technology products,” said Saverio Romeo, principal analyst at Beecham Research, a research and analysis company that specialises in wearable technology. “This is the approach that is needed to drive the emerging wearable technologies market. The convergence of technology, aesthetics, brands and visions, will harness the potential of wearable technologies and create a mass market. We expect to see more partnerships between the technology and fashion and creative industries in the next 12 months.”

Beecham will shortly be publishing its new report on the future of wearable technology looking at the convergence of function and style and has created the wearable technology application chart. Beecham has also produced a short video on this topic, you can see that below.

But the deal isn’t just interesting because Oakley and Ray-Ban collaborations might inject some much-needed style into Google Glass, but Luxottica’s retail brands, like Sunglass Hut, could also make distributing the geeky glasses to a mainstream market much easier.

I just wonder if these will still hit the sub $300 price point.