EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: Nina Garcia is going high tech: The “Project Runway” judge and Marie Claire creative director will wear Google Glass at New York Fashion Week. As the first editor to cover NYFW in this vein, Garcia’s photos, videos and other Lincoln Center-ized insights will be beamed live across several of Garcia’s and Marie Claire’s social media channels, including Vine, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the magazine’s Web site. Hearst is flagging the initiative as “Be Nina.”
“I’m not going to say it came so easily,” Garcia said of the learning curve for the device, but once she got the hang of it, she started shooting away at Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn and other familiar faces. “Usually I have lots of devices during fashion week. Google Glass Expedition is controlled by your voice or a tap of your finger. It’s a very different device than the iPhone. It’s like wearing a little computer,” she said. “It’s a hands-free experience which is kind of liberating. I can go to a show and just be and not be looking down at my iPhone all the time.”
Garcia will still be tweeting the shows away to her 818,000-plus followers and Instagram-ing to 55,500. She also plans to share shots of the paparazzi-seeking bloggers outside the shows and other scenesters. Garcia, who said she does not have any formal relationship with Google, said, “What I find fascinating is that this may be the beginning of a technology that changes how we interact and how we process and gather information.”
Like any competent critic, Garcia had something for the suggestion box. “The battery time only lasts for one or two hours so you have to reboot. You know fashion week is never a one- or two-hour day — it’s more like 12 hours,” she laughed.