Why Gucci created a ring that monitors your vitals

Gucci's rings are a now-classic presence in the fashion world - rings that monitor the wearer's health, from heart rhythms to sleep cycles by communicating them through an app on one's smartphone, on the other hand, are a novelty. This is precisely the idea behind the collaboration between Gucci and ŌURA that saw Alessandro Michele's brand sign a luxury version of the new wearable device that has become a phenomenon in the United States for the past few years and arguably the most famous symbol of the new wave of wearable technology dedicated to health that will become increasingly important in the coming years. Two months ago, ŌURA had announced the sale of its millionth ring, just over a year after a $100 million funding round during what Fast Company defined as «a quest to become the ultimate health wearable». The fact that Gucci has decided to collaborate with the company is not only indicative of how the brand has a keen eye for the most innovative products (on Twitter, several users proudly recount how the ring was able to signal Covid-19 infections or help with female fertility issues by tracking the rise in body temperature) but also how the modern concept of luxury is blending the idea of material sophistication of traditional high-end item categories with that of technological sophistication of new wearable devices.

One of the campaign claims with which Gucci presented the collaboration reads: «It’s about life as much as it’s about lifestyle», signaling a kind of transition from a lifestyle understood as an "aspirational dream" promised by a certain luxury product to a lifestyle understood as an actual set of healthy and responsible habits concerning a physical well-being, if you will almost clinical considering how in recent years the smart ring technology has expanded the range of body parameters that can be measured in its various reiterations. In addition to the commercial success as such (the so-called sleeping industry has a market value of about $70 billion), the ring has also found success among celebrities-including Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as Twitter's Jack Dorsey, and are already widespread among Silicon Valley circles, appearing frequently on social media as various users compare and share their scores and upgrades, while both Apple and Google lead their own investments and acquisitions in the field of sleep tech. Luxury consumer habits are evolving: it's no longer just about what product you wear but also how you take care of yourself - and the Oura Ring is a pop product, pleasingly futuristic and able to cross the line between tech and fashion by turning a piece of jewelry into a body function monitoring tool.

If the world's leading fashion brand decides to engage with the health tech universe, it is not just because the market is expanding rapidly, but because the culture around it is. The luxury consumer has begun to desire more than the classic tech gadget, especially when the gadget in question is about not something unrelated to the idea of lifestyle such as telephony, but about that suture point where technology and wearability meet. After Prince Harry wore the ring last year, the Tatler defined it a «wellness status symbol» wondering if a gold version of it could actually go so far as to transcend the concept of the ring as ornament and become something more, perhaps the signifier of a new kind of culture to which it is good to be updated, perhaps the hallmark of a category of consumers who can afford to take better care of themselves than the rest. Just like organic foods becoming status signifiers, now wearable tech can also enter this kind of discourse by advancing it and presenting a new kind of product. Whatever revolution is taking place, Gucci is already in the forefront of being a key player in it.