Dressing Up with Gadgetry
Just a quick heads up to men: If you're accessorizing with more than shoes and a watch, you're a metrosexual or worse. I don't care if something makes your phone clip look cool. Leave the self-styling efforts to GQ-types and pimps:
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.