6 minute read
Maxed Out by Sinclair Jelleme
32 • SMU LOOK IN STUDIO PHOTOSHOOT MAXED OUT
Meet Apple’s AirPods Max, the Techcessory of the Season.
by Sinclair Jelleme photography by Ella McDonald models: Roshan Gupta, Alivia Waters and Elias Mann
For Olivia Doyle, wearing Apple AirPods Max is the foundation of a cool fit. Doyle, a senior education major at SMU, says that wearing the funky oversized headphones “forces me to wear something I think will look equally as ‘cool’ as the headphones themselves.”
Doyle isn’t alone. It’s hard to scroll through TikTok without seeing an influencer “styling” their AirPods Max. The headphones are Apple’s newest variation of AirPods, the small, wireless earbuds introduced in 2014. When the Max version was released in 2020, they quickly became the techcessory of the moment. By the summer of 2022, they’d blown up, becoming both a coveted fashion statement and a status symbol.
It was only natural that fashion people would gravitate toward this pricey item (just shy of $550), says Mark Gurman, a technology analyst for Bloomberg Business in Los Angeles. The price, he says, “makes them unattainable for many people, hence creating the allure of it being a high-fashion accessory.”
Wearable tech has been popular since 1975 when the first calculator wristwatch, made by Pulsar, went mainstream. Peak popularity came in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Japanese manufacturers such as Casio and Seiko entered the game, but the style faded by the late ’80s, giving way to pagers (also called beepers) and Walkman portable cassette players, both of which could be worn on a belt or the edge of a pant. In 2010, a term entered the Urban Dictionary to describe a popular piece of wearable technology: a techcessory.
In September, 2012, wearable tech merged with fashion when Google teamed up with fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg to help launch Google Glass. These tech-enabled eyeglasses debuted on models walking in DVF’s New York Fashion Week runway. The hype, however, was short-lived. Among the fashion crowd, the glasses soon “went from being coveted to becoming a punchline,” according to a 2015 New York Times article titled “Why Google Glass Broke.” The article also noted that tech reviewers rejected Google Glass, too — it was described as “the worst product of all time.”
Despite the Google Glass fail, other techsessories have succeeded. Perhaps the most notable has been the Apple Watch, released in 2014. Described as a combination of technology, style and functionality by Business Insider, the fashion world certainly approved of the style part of that description – that same year, the Apple Watch made the cover of Vogue China. Designer brands such as Hermès and Louis Vuitton offer a variety of bands for the Apple Watch, and the renowned jewelry label Lagos even makes an 18k gold and full diamond band for the watch that costs just under $40,000.
Apple’s newest incarnation of wearable tech is the AirPods Max. These heavy headphones have the same function as AirPods, but they’re designed to be worn on the head instead of inside the ear. While they are clearly wearable tech, Apple’s price point placed them a step higher than similar styles from Apple’s competitors like Beats by Dre, priced generally between $100 and $150, and Bose, available in the $350 range.
Airpods Max have become more than just alluring. They’ve been seen on the social media feeds of modelebrities Kylie Jenner, Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber, singer Dua Lipa and actor Timothée Chalamet. In early 2022, streetstyle publication Highsnobiety.com announced that “finishing off a look with a pair of AirPods Max has become the Gen Z equivalent of a designer bag.” In July, fashion and style website Byrdie called the Airpods Max the Internet’s favorite techcessory and announced that 2022 was the “year of the supersized headphone,” thanks to “social media and a stream of famous
trendsetters co-signing them as the next big thing.”
Two forces fueld their popularity: social media influencers flocked to them and because of the inherent appeal of the Apple brand.
On TikTok, influencers are using AirPods Max to accessorize their looks. “Clara Perlmutter, who goes by the TikTok handle @Tinyjewishgirl and currently has over 815K followers, styled hers with pieces from emerging designers,” Aemelia Madden wrote in the 2022 Byrdie article. “Others are going for a more casual route, styling gym staples or simple jeans and tee combination with a sleek pair of headphones as a finishing touch.” When influencers embraced the AirPods Max, it was only natural that their followings did the same. “Influencers have great sway on consumers,” Walter Loeb wrote in a 2022 Forbes article about influencer culture. “The power of this influence is best seen across many of the social platforms that consumers spend hours reviewing every day.”
These influencers have even swayed students at SMU. According to a September 2022 poll of more than 70 students, nearly 20% of respondents admitted that they purchased their AirPods Max because they saw a social media influencer wearing them. But it’s not just the influencers behind the Airpods Max appeal. It’s also the status imparted by its brand.
“I definitely think the Apple brand — particularly for its ‘Pro’ products — has become a status symbol and that’s why you see so many people spring for the Apple versions of certain technology categories,” Gurman says.
Participant answers to the SMU survey confirm this. When asked what separates AirPods Max from other headphones, poll participants answered things like “They’re Apple,” “The Brand,” and “The Name.”
There’s no telling how long the popularity of AirPods Max will last, but Doyle bets they’ll be around for a while. “When Apple first came out with AirPods they took over and now it’s just the norm,” she says. “I would assume these might go the same way.”
Sinclair Jelleme is a senior majoring in fashion media with an art history minor.
Are AirPods Max just a passing fad, or are these huge TikTok-famous headphones here to stay? Fashion forecasters might have something to say about that.
Fashion forecasters are researchers who study the fashion marketplace and buying behavior. They generally describe the popularity of fashion items using three basic terms: fad, trend and classic. Usually, a fad lasts about a season, according to a 2021 article on The Tech Fashionista, a website about the future of fashion, but a trend can last three to five years (a micro-trend) or five to 10 years (a mega trend). A classic is something that withstands the test of time, regardless of the time period, according to the article.
How the AirPod Max will be classified remains unclear, but fashion historian Rachel Weingarten told Teen Vogue in a 2022 article about the popularity of the headphones that, while the AirPods Max are a big hit now, whatever is coming next is likely to be smaller. “Fashion always fluctuates,” she said. “So if we see micro-sized cell phones, the next versions will be oversized.” – S.J.
