Fashion Phones and L'Amour (Mobile Phones)

Our Friend the Computer

We’re back chatting about the early 2000s Nokia “Fashion Phones”! These phones preferenced a positioning of mobile phones as a fashion accessory, or fashion statement, over technological functionality. Following from the first two episodes of the season, Ana and Camila discuss gendered product design and marketing, aesthetic obsolescence, what “retro” really means, and why Nokia may have had an interest in creating these “experimental” designs in the first place.
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Main research was done by Camila. Audio editing by Ana.
Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages).
Interstitial sounds from the Media Archaeology Lab.
OFtC is a sister project of the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
References:
- Nokia “Distinctly Bold” Campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG1JDYUrBUM
- Bramston, Dave, “Basics product design: Idea Searching”, 2008, Bloomsbury Academic
- De Giovanni, Pietro, “Cases of Circular Economy in Practice”, 2022, IGI Global
- Hjorth, Larissa, “Mobile media in the Asia Pacific : gender and the art of being mobile”, Routledge, 2009
- Katz, James E. and Sugiyama, Satomi, “Mobile Phones as Fashion Statements: The Co-creation of Mobile Communication’s Public Meaning”, 2005
- Shade, Leslie Regan, “Feminizing the Mobile: Gender Scripting of Mobiles in North America”, Continuum, 21:2, 2007, pp. 179-189
- https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/nokia-7380
- https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/nokia-7280
- https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/05/nokia_l_amour_collection/