Wired Headphones Are Cool Again
By Lauren CochraneWhen it comes to technology, we live in a world where the assumption is that newer is better, that we always need the upgrade, the latest gadget. So when a trend comes along that disrupts this truism, it feels amusing. It’s also, perhaps at a push, a little bit of resistance to Big Tech, a monolith that is so focused on the new that it’s often accused of built-in obsolescence. Enter: wired headphones. Seen on it-girls, footballers and pop stars, here’s how an item that Bluetooth tried to kill came back from the dead.
When did the wired headphone come back?
Wired It Girls, the Instagram account that documents the likes of Emrata, Doechii, Kaia Gerber and Bella Hadid with their chosen ear accessories, began in 2021, founded by Shelby Hull. It now has 18,000 followers and is the legitimacy that those who are not It Girls needed to wear wired headphones, the white ones that used to be free when you bought an iPhone from Apple. Brands have noticed the trend. In 2024, Chanel released a pair of wired headphones – yours for a cool $14,700.
Why did wired headphones come back?
Speaking to The Washington Post in 2023, Hull said that this trend is about “studied carelessness: If you show that you’re trying, you’ve failed, automatically. It’s not cool anymore. So the older, the dirtier, the more tangled the wires, the better.” There’s also a boring practicality element too. In a Vogue In the Bag video in 2022, model Gigi Hadid pulled out a pair of wired headphones commenting “Who wants to charge their AirPods?” It’s hard not to agree.
What other trends do wired headphones fit into?
There’s no doubt wired headphones have the feel of Y2K, an era much loved in fashion at the moment, one where out-of-home technology was just about still a novelty, and people still used iPods. They also could be seen as part of a wider movement against the endless upgrade of tech – see the dumb phone as a potential solution to too much doom-scrolling.
Also, aesthetically, they chime with the slightly dorky look of doing business in the early noughties, one which feels perfect for an era where corpcore / finance-bro chic is enjoying a moment.
Is this just a trend for It Girls?
Absolutely not – or rather, it’s now a fact of the internet that a person of any gender can be an It Girl. See the likes of Paul Mescal and Harry Styles featured on Hull’s account.
Away from the very online, there’s sport – always an arena that helps to confirm a trend is definitely happening. In the past, the pre-game footballer has often been spotted looking focused with gigantic Beats-style cans over their ears. Lamine Yamal is on board with this look – he’s Beats’ latest ambassador – but it is changing. See Myles Lewis-Skelly, the 18-year-old academy graduate who has bossed Arsenal’s left side this season, at the Bernabau before the team’s victory against Real Madrid. FaceTiming his mum in the empty stadium before kick-off last month, he did so using a pair of wired Apple headphones.
Where do wired headphones go now?
Addison Rae, the influencer turned pop star, released ‘Headphones On’ at the end of April. In the video we see her visiting Iceland – the supermarket, not the country – plugging into wired headphones, and allowing herself to dream away to somewhere far less mundane, riding down a beach on a horse. While they do make an excellent prop, you have to wonder if the on the nose treatment here has the try-hard feel that Hull steers clear of.
The way to move it on? By going even further back, of course. Newsletter Blackbird Spyplane recently reported that ‘hot girl headphones’ in Tokyo are now the ones with the orange foam on the ears worn with a Sony Walkman in the eighties. Expect to see on a Hadid or a Mescal sometime soon. And to keep your aura points high, unless you’re Spanish football’s latest teen prodigy, you’ll avoid the wireless at all costs.
Lauren Cochrane is Senior Fashion Writer of The Guardian and contributes to publications including The Face, ELLE, Service95, Konfekt and Mr Porter. Based in London, she writes about everything from catwalk shows to footballers’ style and the linguistics of Love Island. She is author of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Classics.
You can read all of Lauren’s writing on Something Curated here. Header photo courtesy of Chanel.