fashion

It's nothing new, but the habit of headphone manufacturers to crop up with the latest "fashion-forward" model has enjoyed a sharp uptick as of late. Newcomer Urbanears provides several examples, with three lines of portable headphones designed to catch eyes and turn heads. One is the Plattan, an on-ear model that comes in a choice of 14 colors. Unfortunately, these earphones don't offer the clearest audio quality, but they do pump out plenty of bass and cost a relatively affordable $60 a pop.

Read the Urbanears Plattan review.

Attention all you fashionistas out there. Samsung has launched a new line of cell phones called the Samsung Diva Collection 2010 to satisfy your inner diva.

Designed by Estonian model Carmen Kass, the line is targeted toward "fashionable women" and consists of two devices, the Samsung Diva S7070 and the Samsung Diva S5150.

Both phones feature an embossed quilted back cover (pearl white on the S7070 and silver on the S5150) and offer special features, such as Beauty Effect and Lomo Effect camera options for "flawless portraits," an SOS message for security, a Fake Call feature … Read more

It's official: the tech world has its very own designer. Vivienne Tam, who has designed not one but two special edition designer Netbooks for HP, plus accessories, is now teaming up with Monster (yeah, the cables people) to make designer limited-edition headphones.

Monster CEO Noel Lee announced the pairing at the company's CES press conference this week, and said the headphones would be unveiled at New York Fashion Week this year. The 'phones will sport Tam's "butterfly" design, which is part of her spring collection, and is featured on the forthcoming HP Netbook.

Previous fashion/… Read more

I am not really Batman, despite what I tell girls on dates, but if I had this badass Bat utility belt I could maybe convince them otherwise. I mean, it's only $279 and could easily hold all my portable gadgets, plus my wallet and a young lady's heart (not literally, of course).

The 38-inch-wide belt is made of faux leather and has eight pouches with Batman logo emblems on the snaps, as well as a gold-plated metal buckle with a Batman logo emblem. It'll be available in June of '10, but Entertainment Earth is taking preorders now. … Read more

Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion demo follows rookie detective Carrie Chase as she tries to solve the murder of a fashion designer in New York City. In each scene of the game, players help Detective Chase find items that will help solve the crime. This game is a fresh new take on games that feature a classic seek-and-find motif.

The game's interface is well designed and resembles comics and graphic novels. As you begin, Detective Chase's boss instructs her on how and where to begin. The game starts in Chase's new office, which its former occupant … Read more

I can't help but cringe every time I get an e-mail blast referring to "special" gadgets made "just for women!" Maybe this is because I was around during a time when this meant splashing some Pepto-pink paint onto an otherwise unchanged piece of tech. Or perhaps it's more that many of these efforts are still so often misguided. Show me one woman who likes shimmery tech with an interface made of bubble writing and I'll show you another who loves matte-black gear that uses only analog knobs.

Now, I'm not accusing Audio-Technica … Read more

Different games are made for different people. I can understand that. Nevertheless, it's disappointing that Nintendo addressed its new game, Style Savvy, exclusively to girls. An adaptation of a Japanese game that Nintendo has already found great success with, Style Savvy is entirely devoted to fashion. You buy clothes, you sell clothes, you dress up your avatar, and you open your own boutique to sell your fashion solutions to the world. When Nintendo sent its alerts and asked us here at CNET to check out the game, we were slightly less than excited about it. That doesn't seem like great news for a game that's front-and-center in Nintendo's holiday lineup, but then again, we're not the target audience.

I am far from interested in fashion, and the box design looked a lot like other DS shovelware released by many, many companies already. To be honest, my colleagues thought I was crazy to even be covering this game in the first place. Still, I was curious. I said I'd give it a try. And so a copy found its way into my DS. And, to my great surprise, it's still in there days later.

First off, this game is a retail/shopping simulator. The main focus is on greeting new customers, listening to their shopping requests, and then recommending a piece of clothing to fit their budgets. It might sound boring, but the reward is guessing right and getting a very satisfied customer who might buy even more, adding valuable income to your supply. With that money you buy more items from the design center (10,000 items cycled by season and randomness adds up to an Animal Crossing level of diversity). An in-game fashion magazine even shows off new fashion trends for the season, which parallels actual time.

The game starts you off as a store employee and then puts you in charge of your own store, where you try to succeed as well as you can. Everything you wear and how you behave also affects your performance, creating a surprisingly casual, yet deep, experience...and as you can see, I pretty much became hooked. I'm not embarrassed to admit that. The game is also controlled via stylus and with the DS turned on its side in "book" format. Its pace is slow enough for a subway ride, and the many small interactions create a persistent microgame that can be played in intervals as small as a minute.

My main issue, however, is that this game is officially targeted at girls.… Read more

I've never seen Ralph Lauren in real life, but when he appeared on "Friends" a few years ago, he looked somewhat diminutive and not entirely in the first bloom of slenderness.

So I wonder what he might have thought when a recently produced Ralph Lauren ad seemed to feature a model who last ate in 2004 and clearly enjoyed the attention of a plastic surgeon whose diet consisted entirely of mushrooms from the magic department of his local supermarket.

Those assiduously nourished people at Photoshop Disasters were rather taken with this image, in the way one might … Read more

Several colleagues of mine are in London this week to unveil the special TEDGlobal issue of our design mind magazine in a very special TED Salon on Monday, with the title "More Substance of Things Not Seen." The event will be co-hosted by frog design and TED, and moderated by Sam Martin, editor-in-chief of design mind, and Bruno Giussani, European director of TED.

It comes in handy for the frog delegation that this is also the first week of the magnanimous London Design Festival, an eclectic assembly of design-related programs, exhibitions, and parties all over town.… Read more