Wireless Phones Become Fashionable

"Fashion designer Anna Sui announced the debut of the Anna Sui Mobile by Samsung. Sui designed the limited edition version of Samsung and T-Mobile's e315 camera phone. The wireless handset is purple with rosettes, a butterfly and a dangling charm. Samsung has collaborated with Vogue Magazine to launch the product in an 8-page advertising section of the magazine's March 2005 issue. (Source: The Mercury News) "

why thank you Mercury News for this little bit of revelation. Turns out, cell phones are becoming fashionable! Watch out! Have you been to Asia lately? Cell phones are fashionable and, even in the US, they have been jumping on the wave of not only "cool gadget" but also fashion.

This afternoon I was in a coffee shop when I noticed a teen-age girl at a table next to me chatting away on her phone, legs propped up on the chair across the table. Her companion, patiently waited for her to finish her call and drank his tea in silence. The girl was what one would typically expect from an american teenager - glittering lip gloss and hair in a pony tail, cheap shiny jewlery, cryptic words and numbers written on the back of her hand in blue ink. She was dressed in pink - pink top, pink and gray pants, sparkly pink sneakers, pink sweatshirt draped over the chair. In her hand she was holding a Motorola phone, equipped with a sparkling, baby-blue face-plate. The phone obviously did not come in this color, this was an accessoiry buy, which matched nearly perfectly with her outfit and manner. There was a little charm dangling off the strap-loop: a hello-kitty trinket. Everything was pastel and sparkling.

In San Francisco Chinatown you can get your phone engraved. It helps if the cover is of very hard shiny plastic or metal. You can get dragons and castles twining along the battery cover and framing the screen. It's a cheap job, but a friend of mine never mixes up her phone with anyone else. She also gets an impressive number of compliments. Same thing you might hear about a bracelet you wear or a particularily interesting watch.

A cell phone is an accessoiry... in view more often than many other things we wear that can be dictated by fashion. How can it just now "become" fashionable? Because Vogue said so?

While adults are lingering along the "fashion" path, accepting that their phones are personal items, similar in nature to watches or jewlery, teens picked this idea up so naturally, it's hard to imagine things ever being different.