The future’s so invasive, you gotta wear shades.
As Meta and Ray-Ban push their Kylie Jenner-fronted smart glasses — the kind that can film your perspective walking down the street, Shazam a song playing next to you and (allegedly) recognize a stranger’s face in a crowd — a growing group of both New York eyewear brands and designers is barking back with sunglasses that block surveillance software and biometric data scans entirely.
Translation?
“We’re making a firewall for your face,” Nate Troxell, the general manager of Solir Optics, a Glen Falls, NY brand that’s been selling “anti-facial recognition” sunglasses ranging between $70 and $100 after receiving requests from customers, told The Post.
While most sunglasses on the market are singularly obsessed with blocking UV rays, Troxell said his company set out to guard against a much wider — and much sneakier — spectrum of light, including infrared and blue light rays.
The brand is also currently developing anti-surveillance lenses for prescription specs.
Despite its embedded high tech, Troxell insists his line is more subdued than most would expect.
“We wanted our designs to blend in,” he explained, noting that the original technology was developed for cannabis growers looking to block artificial light exposure in their greenhouses. “It’s not like you’re wearing spy glasses. You’re just wearing sunglasses that have a much deeper function.”
Throw on a pair of these shades, and you’ll also be able to block the retinal scans that security cameras use to secretly ID people in casinos, concert halls, and even supermarkets like Wegmans.
Keren Rose Gold, a Tribeca-based designer, artist and owner of luxe eyewear brand A-Morir, has also started making anti-surveillance glasses.
“I’m not a nefarious person,” Gold, whose brand created eyewear for stars like Lady Gaga and Rihanna, told The Post. “I’m not going to do anything wrong. So why is Big Brother in the takeout sushi aisle tracking me without permission? It makes me deeply uncomfortable.”
To fight back, Gold created Handle With Care, a line of bespoke, 3D-printed sunglasses that debuted this month for $425, with some pairs selling for a whopping $725.
Inspired by the US Navy’s groundbreaking “dazzle camouflage” of the early 1900s, the glasses use black-and-white motifs to “scramble” the sensors of facial recognition devices.
She’s also selling a $625 pair based on Japanese anime cartoon eyes, originally created for a Vogue shoot. “The model was trying to unlock her phone during a break and she couldn’t do it with the glasses on,” Gold said, laughing. “That’s when I realized they were anti-tech.”
And the Tribeca artist doesn’t mind looking kooky while fighting the bots.
“Digital surveillance feels so heavy and serious. Why shouldn’t we fight it by looking fabulous? I want these glasses to be so much cooler than spying corporations could ever be,” she said.
She’s even tested her anti-surveillance specs in the least glam setting possible: a surgical pre-op unit.
“I had to get a procedure this year and so I wore the anti-surveillance glasses into the hospital. Everyone loved them. The security guard at the entrance was doubled over in laughter. He was like, ‘I can’t stop smiling.’ Which is cool because, in reality, my glasses made it harder for him to do his job.”
Even big-box brands like Zenni Opticals are also seeing green with their “ID Guard” model that looks like a pair of normal reading glasses, but stops data peepers in their tracks.
The particular type of eyewear comes as more shoppers consider “adversarial clothing,” a category of crazy-print tops and pants designed “to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems,” according to the Guardian.
Last year, the conspiracy-drenched musician M.I.A. made an “anti-tracking” line called Ohmni that promised to “safeguard personal privacy and autonomy” by blocking electromagnetic waves. Included: A $65 tinfoil hat.
And knitwear designer Rachele Didero created the anti-surveillance brand Cap_able in 2019, with wild printed textiles created to thwart facial recognition software. “We now inhabit environments saturated with cameras and computer vision systems,” she wrote in her manifesto. “In this landscape, being visible means being processed. And clothing — once a passive surface — becomes an active participant in this exchange.”
The solution to blocking the bots could be one of Cap_able’s $617 sweaters, with a knitwear pattern that looks more like an old-school Magic Eye poster than a typical fashion print.
Of course, you could also just embrace the surveillance state with a Ring Cam selfie — a new trend, according to CNN, that turns Big Brother’s constant presence into another excuse for a TikTok post.
If you can’t beat ’em… pose for ’em?
