Fashion for your iPhone from McCartney, D&G and others

The iPhone case has become the new lipstick: an accessible entry point to a luxury label.

From left: Strut clear case ($45, shopbop.com), Stella McCartney, and Anya Hindmarch.

I rarely LOL. That is, use the acronym. I have never employed the word “fail” as a noun. And I only recently began using the wondrous language of emoji. I’m not a Luddite or grandparent, but there are certain slightly juvenile parts of modern life I instinctively resist.

That’s the best explanation I can offer for my belated realisation that an iPhone cover can function as a crucial part of a fashionable ensemble. While I snootily kept my back turned, the universe of phone accessories has Big Bang-ed its way into something sprawling and significant.

Consider that your phone is the one possession that can be visible all day long. “In terms of accessories, I can’t think of one that people interact with more,” says David Watkins of Adopted, which makes luxe iPhone cases in leather and exotic skins. “Even more than a handbag.”

Android users are mostly left out of the game, explains Watkin. Since there are so many different models and manufacturers, most fashionable cover makers focus on Apple’s iPhone, which comes only in a few sizes.

Because your iPhone is so visible, whatever you use to encase it becomes a defining personal statement. That’s a fair amount of pressure. Luckily, when it comes to cases, it seems women have given themselves licence to indulge in teenage-girl fun. “Everyone loves grown-up, expensive fashion, but there’s something special about messing it up and making it your own,” says Anya Hindmarch, whose pop-cool leather stickers have become a phone sensation. “It’s like having a beautiful watch and tying on a piece of thread with a little charm on it. It’s irreverent.”

Hindmarch says making a phone identifiably your own is also necessary: “We all have the same thing in our hands. It’s actually quite practical to personalise it.”

A number of labels — including Stella McCartney, Diane von Furstenberg, Kate Spade, Tory Burch and Fendi — have phone covers in their accessory repertoire. But perhaps the king of the fashion-iPhone cover game is Jeremy Scott. The ever-more-cartoony and camp cases he designs each season for Moschino — sculptural rubber cases that transform your phone into, say, a bubblegum-pink Barbie hand mirror — have become zeitgeisty, must-have items.

The designer sees the cases — average price $US95 ($133) — as a way for anyone to own a bit of what he does. “It was really important for me to have that connection with fans and the public at large, even if they can’t afford something off the runway,” he says. The iPhone case has become the new lipstick: an accessible entry point to a luxury label.

Scott’s cases are not everyone’s cup of tea, however. Last week, I tried out his most recent offering, a big rounded rubber teddy bear wearing a T-shirt that says This is Not a Moschino Toy, for a day. While it endlessly amused my colleagues, it felt wrong for me. I hesitated to pull it out of my bag on my morning commute for fear of what my fellow straphangers might think. It also considerably fattened up my elegant iPhone 6.

Nordstrom’s director of creative projects Olivia Kim says a fashion-obsessed kid on my train might have flipped to see such a hot item in the flesh. That said, Kim concedes that less expressive cases can be equally impactful. “I like the simple ones that are well-designed and have great colours,” she says, suggesting I consider the sleek perforated plastic cases from Japanese company Andmesh.

Still, I wavered when Sarah Andelman, buyer and creative director of Paris boutique Colette, explained that she chose her bunny ear case primarily out of practicality: “It’s so easy to pick up from my bag and to hold while I take pictures,” she wrote.

Pragmatism with just a dash of quirk? Hippety-hop. I might be sold.