Gentle Monster Puts a Camera and Gemini Behind Its Most Understated Frame Yet

The Seoul eyewear house just handed Google and Samsung its second design, and this time it looks almost nothing like a gadget.

Gentle Monster has now shown the world two versions of the same idea, and the gap between them says something about where this whole project is heading. The first design arrived earlier this year alongside Google’s I/O developer conference, a concept reveal more than a finished product. This week, timed to Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event in London, the brand unveiled its second design in the collection, a genuine new optical frame built for daily wear rather than a stage demo.

A tailored cream suit, braided gold tie, and oversized Gentle Monster sunglasses create a polished statement look that blends contemporary luxury with bold eyewear design.

The Korean eyewear house calls this its debut in smart eyewear, and the framing matters. Gentle Monster has spent over a decade building a reputation on frames that look like sculpture, oversized lenses, asymmetrical shapes, materials that do not behave the way glasses are supposed to. Folding a camera, microphones, speakers, and Google’s Gemini assistant into that design lang without losing the brand’s identity was never going to be simple, and the second design is the clearest evidence yet of how the brand intends to solve that problem: by making the technology disappear into a shape people would already want to wear.

Gentle Monster’s clear-lens AI smart glasses pair a classic rectangular sil with discreet Samsung and Google-powered wearable technology for everyday use.

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Where the first design leaned into a bolder, more overtly experimental cat eye sil, this second frame goes in almost the opposite direction. It is a minimal square optical shape, slim in profile, described across multiple outlets as more understated and versatile than anything the brand has released in the smart eyewear line so far. Samsung’s own announcement describes the Gentle Monster edition as a slim black frame pairing a straight upper rim with softly rounded lower edges, language that reads more like a description of a classic optical staple than a piece of wearable technology.

That restraint appears to be the point. A pair of glasses that draws attention to itself defeats the purpose of an all day AI companion, and Gentle Monster’s own design lang, usually built around being noticed, has been dialed down here specifically so the frame can slip into daily rotation the way a normal pair of glasses would.

Lightness was reportedly a specific engineering target throughout development, with Samsung noting that fit points such as the forehead and ears were refined in close collide with the eyewear partners to keep the frame comfortable through extended wear, a detail that matters more for a device meant to sit on someone’s face for nine hours than it would for a standard fashion release.

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Strip away the design lang and this is, functionally, a computer worn on the face. The glasses run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen1 platform, built on Android XR, and connect users to Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, entirely through voice, taps, and swipes on the temples, with no display cluttering the wearer’s field of vision. A built in camera lets Gemini see what the user sees, microphones and speakers handle input and output, and a small LED indicator signals when the camera is active.

Reported capable include real time translation, turn by turn navigation, contextual assistance based on what the wearer is looking at, photo and short video capture, and hands free control over music and calls. Samsung’s own materials describe use cases like summarizing long messages, reading key information aloud, capturing a whiteboard or meeting discussion and organizing it automatic into Notes, and sharing a live point of view feed during a call.

Battery life is rated at up to nine hours on a single charge, with the accompanying charging case supplying up to seven additional full charges, numbers Samsung is careful to note will vary depending on network conditions, features in use, and device set. The glasses are compatible with both Android devices, including Samsung’s own Galaxy phones and Google’s Pixel line, and iOS devices such as the iPhone, with functionality routed through a dedicated companion app.

None of this is unique to Gentle Monster’s frame on a technical level. Warby Parker’s parallel design runs the identical Android XR platform and Gemini integration. What differs, and what the brand is clearly betting its share of the collision on, is whether people will actually want to wear the hardware, which is precisely the question a fashion label is better positioned to answer than a phone manufacturer.

Gentle Monster’s AI-powered smart glasses, developed in collaboration with Samsung and Google, combine minimalist eyewear design with integrated wearable technology.

For a licensed placement, this section would carry the official Samsung Newsroom product image of the Gentle Monster frame revealed at Galaxy Unpacked, credited to Samsung’s press materials.

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Gentle Monster unveiled the new frame through a campaign shot with two of the most in demand names in fashion right now: Alex Consani and Anok Yai. Both have spent the past few years becoming fixtures of runway seasons and major beauty and fashion campaigns well beyond eyewear, and their presence here signals that Gentle Monster wants this piece of hardware read first as a fashion object and only second as a gadget.

It is a familiar strategy for the brand, which has built its collaboration history on high profile creative partners rather than product specs, but it is a notable choice for a device whose actual selling point, on paper, is a chipset and an AI assistant. Pairing that technology with two models whose entire currency is visual credibility is Gentle Monster explicitly refusing to let the glasses be marketed like a piece of consumer electronics.

For a licensed placement, this section would carry official campaign imagery of Alex Consani and Anok Yai from Gentle Monster’s press materials, credited accordingly rather than pulled from a general image search, since named public figures fall outside what can be sourced directly.

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Samsung introduced the finished designs at Galaxy Unpacked in London on July 22, position the eyewear as an extension of its Galaxy ecosystem rather than a standalone gadget line. Won-Joon Choi, Chief Operating Officer of Samsung’s Mobile eXperience business, framed the project around agentic AI, arguing that as AI assistants become more capable, the priority shifts to making that intelligence feel intuitive and responsive to a person’s actual context, something eyewear can do in a way a phone screen cannot.

Google, for its part, frames the release as a natural extension of its Android XR platform and Gemini’s reach into day hardware. Sameer Samat, President of Android Ecosystem at Google, described a shared view between the two companies to bring context aware intelligence into daily life, calling out the blend of Gentle Monster’s design credentials with Gemini’s assistance as central to that goal.

Both companies were careful to frame the hardware around consent and control, noting that camera use is signaled with a visible indicator and that features involving recording, translation, or contextual memory require explicit permissions, network connect, or compatible devices depending on the function.

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Gentle Monster was founded in Seoul in 2011 by Hankook Kim, reportedly with early backing from Jae Wook Oh, out of a fairly specific observation: most eyewear at the time had been engineered around Western facial proportions, leaving a gap for frames built around different bridge and face shapes. What started as a single optical studio in Seoul’s Apgujeong district grew into a brand known as much for its retail spaces, often designed as full art installations that rotate seasonally, as for the glasses themselves.

A rectangular-frame version of Gentle Monster’s AI smart glasses, combining classic eyewear styling with discreet Samsung and Google-powered wearable technology.

The brand has never been shy about high profile collides, having worked previously with Maison Margiela, Moncler Genius, Hood By Air designer Shayne Oliver, and Prada, among others, alongside its own experimental in house collections. LVMH acquired a seven percent stake in the company in 2017, and Gentle Monster now operates dozens of stores worldwide alongside a wholesale footprint that includes major retailers. A partnership with two of the biggest names in consumer technology is, in that context, less a departure than the natural next connection for a brand whose whole identity has been built on treating eyewear as a canvas for whatever idea it takes on next.

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Samsung and Google chose to launch this category with two eyewear partners rather than one, and the contrast between Gentle Monster’s frame and Warby Parker’s is telling. Where Gentle Monster went for a slim black square sil, Warby Parker’s design uses a subtly upswept brow line in brown, closer in spirit to the brand’s classic American optical catalogue than to anything experimental.

Running the same underlying hardware, chip, and software stack, the two frames exist mainly to prove the same point from two different design philosophies: that this technology can slot into genuinely different fashion sensible without users needing to compromise on how the glasses actually look on their face. Whether one brand’s version outsells the other will likely come down entirely to which design vocab a given customer already trusts.

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Pricing, a specific on sale date, and full regional available  have not been announced for either the Gentle Monster or Warby Parker designs. Samsung and Google have described the two revealed frames as previews of a broader debut collection arriving this fall, with additional designs still to come beyond what has been shown so far. It also remains unclear how features like live translation, navigation, and contextual assistance will vary by market, word, and local regulation, all points both companies have flagged as subject to change ahead of a full launch.