Is wearable tech finally having its moment?

After years of stuttering starts, awkward designs, and more promise than product, wearable tech may finally be ready for its close-up, on your face, no less. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, have quietly turned a corner from curiosity to commercial success, selling over two million pairs since their October 2023 debut.

According to EssilorLuxottica’s latest earnings report, sales of the AI-powered eyewear tripled in the first half of 2025, making it the top-selling smart glasses on the global market and a significant driver of the group’s 16.25 billion dollars in revenue. “Category-defining success,” the company declared, a bold phrase that might not feel so premature this time.

In its H1 financial report the company iterated "we are leading the transformation of glasses as the next computing platform, one where AI, sensory tech and a data-rich healthcare infrastructure will converge to empower humans and unlock our full potential. The success of Ray-Ban Meta, the launch of Oakley Meta Performance AI glasses and the positive response to Nuance Audio are major milestones for us in this new frontier."

So, what’s changed?

For one, the design finally fits the ambition. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses look like, well, Ray-Bans. The tech no longer screams for attention. Instead, it whispers functionality: discreet cameras, voice-activated Meta AI, hands-free calling, and even music streaming. The newer Oakley Meta frames, introduced this summer and already sold out, go a step further with waterproofing, better resolution, and an eight-hour battery life.

This convergence of style and substance has eluded wearable tech for years. Google Glass stumbled on both counts. Snap Spectacles never made it out of the niche. Apple’s Vision Pro, while impressive, is too bulky, expensive, and alien-looking to inspire mass-market adoption. The Meta-EssilorLuxottica play, by contrast, banks on a simple truth: people will only wear tech if it doesn’t make them look like they’re wearing tech.

And consumers seem to agree. Meta’s strategy isn’t just about novelty; it’s about positioning glasses as the next computing platform, as EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri noted. The goal? To move computing even closer to the body, seamless, intuitive, and integrated into daily life.

People will only wear tech if it doesn’t make them look like they’re wearing tech.

Meta’s ambitions go well beyond Ray-Ban. Its 3.5 billion dollar stake in EssilorLuxottica and plans for a Prada collaboration suggest a future where AI eyewear becomes both high fashion and high function. Meanwhile, Apple and Google aren’t sitting idle. Apple is rumoured to be preparing a competing model with a proprietary chip and 2026 launch. Google, in partnership with Warby Parker, has committed 150 million dollars to build translation-enabled AI glasses due out next year.

It’s not just a race for market share, it’s a race for cultural relevance. In a luxury market where attention spans are short and innovation fatigue is real, smart glasses offer a rare moment of intrigue. They combine fashion, tech, and utility without the existential baggage of a headset or the obsolescence cycle of a smartphone.

Of course, real success will be measured not just in units sold but in staying power. Can smart glasses move from novelty to necessity? Can the experience they deliver become so indispensable that leaving home without them feels like forgetting your phone?

For now, the numbers suggest a tide is turning. Meta and EssilorLuxottica’s smart glasses aren’t just a gadget, they’re a category reborn. And this time, they may actually stick.