The Roberto Cavalli of personal technology, Dubai-based Caviar, has released an eyewear lineup that, beyond the eye-watering prices, comes with another controversial detail. Scroll through any subreddit dedicated to smart glasses, and you’ll find plenty of concerns about nonconsensual filming. Earlier in 2026, the BBC reported that a woman entering a London shopping center was approached by a man wearing smart glasses, who then demanded money to remove a video from social media that left her feeling “humiliated.” That’s what makes me approach Caviar’s Odyssey collection with suspicion, even though I find the designs intriguing in their Cavalli-esque extravagance.
I’m all for Meta’s new feature that disables the camera if it detects that someone has tampered with or destroyed the glasses’ privacy LED. The update targets modders who have gone as far as physically drilling into the recording light to get rid of it. Fair enough. And honestly, the feature could come in handy when someone standing right in front of you is filming something… or someone.
But what happens when that person is several meters away? That little privacy LED is still difficult to spot, and that makes Caviar’s decision to turn a controversial piece of tech into a luxury accessory harder for me to get behind.
Every one of the 24 pairs in the Odyssey collection is handcrafted and assembled at the Caviar Atelier. Artisans forge the decorative details one by one, add the engravings, polish each surface, and handle the final assembly by hand. There’s clearly a lot of work going into making these glasses stand out. The problem is that the person in front of the wearer still has to spot a tiny recording light while staring at a pair of glasses designed to grab their attention.
And let’s not forget that, while smart glasses makers are finally taking style seriously—look at Kylie Jenner’s collaboration with Meta—their main appeal is still functionality. Hands-free calls and audio playback are the reasons you buy smart glasses. If style is your top priority, you could always buy a pair from Cartier or Tom Ford.
So I’m struggling to see why someone would spend $6,139 on the Odyssey collection. Maybe a collector could justify it. But then again, if the glasses spend most of their life sitting in a display case, what’s the point of making them smart in the first place?
Roberto Cavalli built his name on fashion that was loud, ornate, and impossible to confuse with anything else. Caviar takes pretty much the same approach to technology. The Odyssey glasses start with the familiar Wayfarer shape, then pile on 24K gold, sterling silver, engraved decorative plaques, black enamel details, and a crocodile-leather charging case.
The ancient Greek inspiration gives the collection a bit more personality, too. Caviar says the decorative details are inspired by Ithaca, the mythical home of Odysseus, while the star-shaped black enamel motifs represent the night sky that guided him home. The combination of gold and a matte-black frame also reminds me of my favorite pair of Cavalli Class sneakers.
But that’s exactly why the privacy issue is so difficult to ignore. Caviar has gone to great lengths to make these glasses impossible to miss, yet the one feature that matters most to everyone around the wearer—the recording indicator—is still just a tiny light.
Someone might notice the gold before they ever notice the camera.
