In December 2024, actor and fashion icon Julia Fox stepped out on the street with a flip-phone buckle strapped across her chest, wires on her nails, and an old Discman-turned-compact mirror hanging from her wrist.
Fox didn’t start the retro-tech fashion trend. Celebrities and internet fashionistas were already wearing iPod Shuffle Minis as hair clips and wired headphones as necklaces. But Fox did make waves online, showing off the Y2K-inspired collaboration from French Canadian artist Gab Bois and refurbished electronics marketplace Back Market — and plugging the Right to Repair movement — on her Instagram.
Much of this fashion channels nostalgia over the nascent days of the digital age — both aesthetically and philosophically. Bois previously designed fine jewelry using sim cards, a camcorder clutch, and a Nintendo DS Lite makeup palette.
“[Tech] was clunkier, slower, but also more tactile and charming,” Bois says. “There was this sense of optimism, too. Everything felt like a glimpse into the future.”
Younger millennials and Gen Z latching on — largely online — seem to be yearning for those simpler times. Digicams from mid-aughts have already made a surprising cultural comeback. It seems only appropriate that classic gadgets that cannot be revived for their original purpose are still being transformed into wearables.
Hundreds of vendors on Etsy are, as Bois puts it, “subverting function for aesthetic purposes.” They’re selling Tamagotchi necklaces, turning circuit boards and microchips into earrings, and crocheting old floppy disks into purses.
While old hardware might not be the easiest material to work with, New York-based designer Nicole McLaughlin finds that fashion is a medium that naturally lends itself to upcycling old tech. Avant-garde fashion, specifically, is about pushing boundaries and redefining what’s considered “wearable.” So why not transform a headset into a bra? Make a thong from an old keyboard? A chunky heel with a working mini PC monitor from eBay?
“It’s fun. It’s lighthearted,” McLaughlin says of her work, adding that her audience is “not trying to take it too serious.”
Because her creations are usually one-of-one conceptual art pieces — photographed and published for display on the internet rather than an actual product to be scaled and sold — she’s not so much focused on their practical use so much as how they change people’s perceptions about waste and sustainable design.
Designer Myra Magdalen shares these sentiments. Finding old keyboards, TV remotes, flip phones, game console controls, and robot toys at the thrift store — she was drawn mainly to the idea that these discarded objects still had creative potential and didn’t have to end up in a landfill.
“Older tech just has more personality,” Magdalen says, who has previously gone viral for her particularly maximalist outfits. Unlike the smooth and streamlined look of today’s devices, back then there were big buttons, small screens, and switches.
“To me, it’s just a fun challenge. It’s sort of a puzzle,” Magdalen explains. “It usually starts with one word, like ‘computer,’ and then it’s like, ‘How can we do head to toe in that vein, in a way that feels like the most me?’”
Jake Olshan, founder of Los Angeles-based streetwear brand Drought, creates sentimental designs that reflect remnants of his childhood, things that he’s sure were also core memories for other people in his generation. But he doesn’t incorporate physical relics from the 2000s into clothes and accessories, he instead pays homage to them with items like a Limewire pendant necklace, a Napster handbag (made in official collaboration with the company), and a giant iPod Nano-shaped mirror.
“The basis of the brand has to do with holding on to that part of yourself,” Olshan says. “As a lot of people my age are growing into adults and getting full-time jobs, apartments … It’s about holding on to your childhood and your youth.”
Retro-tech fashion may not send you back through time, but it certainly tries to capture a specific era before tech and the internet became a serious business.
