Wired earphones — the free white ones that used to come in the box, the ones everyone spent a decade untangling and complaining about — are now a look.
Bella Hadid, Zendaya, Hailey Bieber, Harry Styles: all photographed with a cable running down their front. Not because the audio is better. Because the wire is visible, and AirPods aren’t.
That’s the whole mechanic. A thing millennials rejected as clutter has been reclaimed by Gen Z as a signal — sitting alongside baggy clothing, the middle parting, deliberately blurry photos and digital cameras. The trend cycle doesn’t revive objects. It revives whatever the previous generation was embarrassed by.
The carousel, in text
1. Wired earphones are cool again.
2. Yes, these babies.
3. All the cool people are wearing them. Bella Hadid, Zendaya, Hailey Bieber.
4. Add this to the list of things millennials used, rejected as uncool, and now Gen Z has reclaimed as cool: wired earphones, baggy clothing, middle parting, blurry photos, digital cameras.
5. Side note: do you think Apple will now start charging us for wires for AirPods?
