Influencers are excited about Meta’s glasses. The rest of the world? Not so much

FastCompany: A week before Meta officially released its new Kylie Jenner-embossed smart glasses in June, 23-year-old Allison Oh had already made up her mind about them. Oh, a lifestyle and travel influencer, with more than 100,000 followers on TikTok , attended a marketing event in NYC targeting potential consumers just like her. She says she felt like a small presence in a room filled with hundreds of other content creators who she recognized as having millions upon millions of followers. “The vibes were very upscale,” she says, describing different interactive rooms demonstrating the glasses. Peggy Gou was DJing.

Oh, who already owned a pair of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and was experimenting filming content with them, says she was immediately influenced to buy Jenner’s sleek and cat-eye shaped collab. The aesthetic was reason enough. “I wanted to transition into more beauty and lifestyle content, and when I’m filming front-facing in a mirror, the Kylie glasses look a lot better,” she says. [Photo: Meta] At a time when there’s growing resistance to smart glasses, edging at times into a moral panic about surveillance culture, influencers are finding their stride with them.

Oh is among several lifestyle influencers who tell Fast Company that this new release not only sold them on smart glasses, but has encouraged them to start filming through them more regularly. Meta positions their AI glasses to have all-around utility, with their hands-free calling and messaging capabilities and in-ear walking navigation; but influencers, who vlog their day-to-day, have taken to filming themselves wearing the glasses as its own kind of fashion statement . [Photo: Meta] Since launching in 2021, Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley SKUs have grown in popularity; in 2025, Meta sold 7 million pairs .

But the styles, which skew more sporty and masculine, left a significant segment of the market underserved. The Kylie glasses are more modish and distinct, which helped to fill the gap for a type of aesthetics-focused female consumer. “Ray-Ban is not a premium brand,” says Michelle Shen, a 24-year-old beauty and wellness influencer. “I’ve always been interested in Meta glasses, but I don’t like that they were the Ray-Ban brand … within the content creators’ circles I’m in, it has to be luxury or look luxury.

If the brand was Prada, for example, more people I know would be buying in.” [Photo: Meta] Shen appreciated the “cute” shape of the Kylie glasses and purchased a pair a week after they were in stores. She says she’s returning hers only because the nose bridge doesn’t sit comfortably on her face, an issue other consumers have already flagged. Still, the new release has her convinced that filming from a first-person vantage point is the direction she wants to take her content.

“I think it’s this very interesting POV-type of content, and it’s shot from an angle that is lifelike, and because it’s so new people are more intrigued to watch it,” Shen says about videos she’s recorded with smart glasses. She and others also note that videos where she flips the camera to capture herself in the glasses, or in a mirror selfie shot , tend to perform better. @michelleshen Love my Kylie Jenner meta glasses for this #chanel #kyliejenner #trendingbags #metaglasses #seoul ♬ original sound – Gucci “I’m going to do more talking in the mirror videos,” says Oh.

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