This summer, chic European women swooned over the fashion-forward look of the pink cell phone earpiece. In time for the fall season, a U.S. designer released a black patent-leather thigh holster that stows a phone. Ooo, la la! And for the men: a new collection including Oakley sunglasses with a Bluetooth wireless microphone attachment.
Companies are trying to take the geek out of gadgetry, rendering the old cell-phone-on-a-belt look permanently passe. The aim is to drive up sales in the phone accessory market, which already generates $5 billion annually in the United States.
Techno-fashionistas say that it is the culmination of years of experimental design and that companies are finally finding a comfortable middle ground between form and function, mostly by exploiting ways to make devices smaller and therefore more wearable - much like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod Shuffle or Nano. Those trends, in turn, are creating a new category of accessories that make it even easier for consumers to keep their digital goods close to, or on, their person.
High-end designers are already covering that ground. Louis Vuitton sells a $305 "international telephone case." Dior sells a $315 case for iPod Minis, as well as a $295 travel case for all of iPod's accessories.
"As things get sleeker, it's going to be something that's more and more important" for mainstream fashion, said Robin Sackin, chairman of the fashion merchandising management department at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. But it takes time for things to gain enough acceptance to become a mainstream wearable item, Sackin said.
A guard at Reagan National Airport did not like the look of Eisner talking to himself and wearing sunglasses indoors with a suspicious attachment dangling near his sideburns. The attachment was the latest version of wireless Bluetooth technology that enabled him to use his cell phone without hanging a black cord from his ear.
"Though considered geek wear by some, it's considered fashion-forward by others," Eisner said in his own defense. The guard's "concern was that I was a complete weirdo," said Eisner, who is an executive at Simply Wireless Inc., a cell-phone retail chain.
In the industry, the Razrwire qualifies as runway fashion. CTIA, the cellular trade association, has featured fashion shows at its annual trade show in recent years, with lanky models wearing bowling-ball-sized helmets trotting down catwalks. To showcase its new line of hats, helmets and jackets with built-in cellular microphones, Motorola Inc. hired snowboarders to slide down a 60-foot ski jump outside the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year.
"In 2002, we produced a wearable technology fashion show to try to find out what the potential was," said Pablos Holman, designer of the cell phone thigh holster for Tsaya, the Seattle-based company that started selling the product online in August. "They were all totally impractical and totally dorky," he said, and only now is the sub-industry making great strides.
The thigh holster, Holman said, "turned out to be really practical and really sexy," but that's not a status easily achieved by most wearable devices. "It really has to be thought about deeply."
Cell-phone maker Nokia Corp. flirted with purely decorative accessories such as the Medallion I, a necklace-type accessory with a small screen displaying images downloaded from a mobile phone. The company's Web site advised wearers to "go bohemian with an abstract close-up from a favorite painting, your garden, or your body."
Now, said Nokia product manager Marika Patto, the company is no longer focused on devices that just "show off" but ones that serve a function, like the new Nokia Wireless Image Headset, which includes a small screen that hangs around the neck and displays call information or images.
For cell-phone carriers, the benefit is also additional talk time. Making the phone inseparable from its wearer makes it possible to make more calls from the ski slope, the convertible and other places that have not been hospitable to talking.
The number of cell phones that come with Bluetooth capability is in the 55 percent range, and by the end of the year, most phones will have it built in - which, in turn, means a bigger market for wearable stuff, said Towster, Cingular's senior director of devices and accessories. "There's talk, discussion and development around (clothing) products as well," he said. "It's easier to use when integrated with everyday items that people already use."
"We showed an ad with a guy mountain biking and holding a conference call," said Scott Martin, global marketing director for Motorola's accessories business. And this summer, the company partnered with fashion designer Frostfrench for a promotional giveaway of the designer's scarves that matched the pink Bluetooth headsets. The items sold out ahead of schedule in stores across Europe. "The goal is to make it look cool and stylish and all that."
Such devices will gain even more acceptance as prices come down and more people buy them, analysts and retailers said. Entner, however, is a skeptic of Bluetooth couture: "You look like a half-assimilated borg."
Garments and technology just do not make a good combination, he said. If you leave the device in, "you wash your sweater and it's toast. Or you have to charge your sweater or jacket. It's kind of silly."
Of course, toilet water - or eau de toilette, as it has come to be known - initially had a dubious purpose. Rather than pleasing the olfactory sense, it was used to camouflage body odor.
Today's modern woman enjoys the benefits of indoor plumbing, and her choice of fragrance is made to enhance, rather than mask, her personality.
As a result, fragrances have become a multibillion-dollar industry, with the appeal of perfumes reaching all ages, races and socioeconomic groups.
Perfumania, a nationwide perfumery chain based in Florida, says a woman's "fragrance id" is embedded deep in her psyche. She reacts differently to different scents. On herself or someone else, a stiff whiff of a particular scent might result in an "AHHH!" or a "Peeyew!"
•If you prefer R&B, have a lakeside retreat at Tahoe and love tall trees, you're into green scents, which are composed of natural oils found in the leaves and stems of plants.
•If listening to jazz, visiting exotic locales and surrounding yourself with purple are important, a musk or vanilla scent will make you happy.
But finding a signature scent can still be daunting, considering the number of options available. There are traditional scents from famous houses such as Caron, not to mention the burgeoning market of niche, celebrity fragrances, which are sometimes more affordable.
A place to start: your own memory. Is there an aunt from childhood who wore nothing but delicate Caleche? Do you remember the guys in high school who immersed themselves in Polo or the girls who bathed in Charlie after taking gym class?
"Two things trigger our memories - fragrance and music," says cosmetics expert Rachel Weingarten. "Whenever you hear a song from your past or smell a familiar scent that's pleasant, your mind and heart go back to that place.
Age and status in life, however, can influence a woman's selection as well, says Weingarten, a New Yorker whose book, "Hello Gorgeous: American Beauty Products of the '40s-'60s," is due next spring.
"A certain kind of woman will always wear her Boujeron or Cartier," she says, "whereas a younger woman will go through different life stages, with different scents to go with them."
"Women who became attached to Parker's character on ‘Sex and the City' were likely bereft when the show ended," she says. "With this fragrance, Parker's fans feel like they've got some continuity with her, and life goes on."
The Mintel International Group Limited, a market research and consumer intelligence company, says a recent survey shows that more than two-thirds of American female adults and teens wear or have bought perfume or cologne at some time in their lives.
Mary Ellen Lapsansky, executive director of the Fragrance Foundation in New York, says that most women will use more than one scent. Actually, more like "five or six," she says. "They change fragrances with the seasons, even the time of day and for special occasions."
Mandy Aftel owns Aftelier Perfumes, based in Berkeley, Calif. She's written several books on fragrance and makes and sells scents via her Web site, www.aftelier.com . She once created a special "pink lotus" fragrance for Madonna.
"It's depressing how many fragrances are on the market today," she says. "Women buy a lot of perfume because of the advertising. They don't come to the fragrance through their own experience."
Aftel says it's worth the time and effort to sample a scent before buying it. Try it on and see if it's a good fit. After all, there are few more personal purchases a woman can make.
•Sample fragrances along the fingers or on a pulse point. It's important to test perfume on the skin, not on a paper strip, because scent changes over time.
•Keep in mind that perfumes made from pure essential oils don't linger as long on the skin. That's because they don't contain synthetic ingredients, which perpetuate a scent.
•Never buy a fragrance because you liked it on someone else. Body chemistries differ, and a scent on your friend probably won't smell the same on you.
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