Fashion’s latest rise of tech accessories looks surprisingly analogue. Across social media, fully functioning computers are being built inside shell-covered purses picked up from thrift stores, while old make-up compacts are being fitted with interactive screens that play tutorials. The two worlds have long been intertwined, with the relationship between them proving fertile ground for spectacle. One of its defining turn-of-the-millennium moments came at Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer 1999 show, where robotic arms spray-painted Shalom Harlow’s white dress in real time, bringing the precision of machinery into one of the industry’s most visceral runway moments.
More than 25 years later, that experimentation is playing out right at home. Cyberdecks are portable computers pieced together by hand, often using Raspberry Pi boards and small screens, with makers now turning them into everything from miniature libraries to music players. Among those bringing the format back is London-based Annike Tan, who was at the forefront of its recent resurgence when her mermaid cyberdeck, housed inside a vintage clutch, went viral. “I fell down a rabbit hole on YouTube a few months ago with people replacing their smartphones with their analogue counterparts,” she shares, pointing to the current appeal of physical objects.
“While there is a nostalgia factor behind the longing for physical media, it also speaks to a valid response against the digitalisation of everything.”
The timing is no coincidence, with physical media finding a newfound appreciation as the cultural compass points back towards analogue. In Tan’s words, “while there is a nostalgia factor behind the longing for physical media, it also speaks to a valid response against the digitalisation of everything”. As technology becomes increasingly embedded in daily life, there is clearly a growing desire to hold on to something real. “When 99 percent of the things I interact with feel like they’ve been churned out of a factory, everything feels disconnected from ourselves,” she adds. And while the bag charm boom shows no signs of slowing, cyberdecks take that same appetite for personalisation to another level. “Because my cyberdeck looks like me, it feels way more personal, which is something you’d never get from purchasing something fresh from a factory.”
And this trend is only one part of a broader effort to reimagine what wearable objects can be. Across the work of five Asian creators, each interpreting it in their own way, a new age of fashion-tech is already taking shape.
The analogue takeover
Objects with a traceable past are gaining new cachet, from the return of vintage photo booths to the hype surrounding archival pieces. And with electronics entering the picture too, once functional components are finding a second life on the body. As more of daily life disappears into software, these pieces preserve the visual language of earlier innovation. Lianne of Lovelili77 brings discarded computer parts back into view through her Cyber Girl series, soldering each circuit board by hand into one-of-one jewellery. “Circuit boards, chips, wires and mechanical components possess an intricate beauty that feels almost architectural or sculptural, despite being created purely for function,” she says. That quality feels increasingly absent from today’s hyper-polished devices, where everything can seem uncannily perfect and stripped of any lived-in character. “Unlike today’s sleek, sealed devices, vintage electronics proudly revealed their inner workings,” she adds. “People are craving objects that feel tangible and human again.”
Human-made
These pieces usually have a story behind them that is closely tied to their maker. For Carl, the designer behind Everythings, that connection begins with the miniature dollhouse accessories that fascinated him throughout childhood. “Even though I use technology like 3D modelling and printing, I still see every piece as handmade,” he says. His designs pass through repeated revisions before becoming physical, allowing their character to emerge through the hours spent refining them. In a moment where generated imagery can appear almost instantly, the time behind each piece carries a different weight, while the need for whimsy feels like a response to an increasingly uniform digital landscape. With 3D modelling embedded in his process, Carl believes this crossover will only deepen. “Fashion and technology won’t exist as separate worlds anymore. They’ll continue blending together to create objects capable of making everyday life feel just a little more magical.”
Reprogramming the past
As this new wave of accessories takes an increasingly analogue turn, it is also bringing back the playful, Y2K-inflected look of older devices, with familiar objects returning with their purpose completely reworked. The imagery surrounding them is returning too, from the moody, cool-toned palette of Gen X Soft Club—the niche art scene from the 2000s—to the highly stylised mobile phone advertisements of the era gaining traction again. And with fashion craving a sense of fun, Yiou Huang of Extro Code taps directly into that intersection. One of her creations that quickly became internet buzz? A flip-phone AirPods Max case, 3D-printed to resurrect one of early mobile culture’s most recognisable shapes. For Yiou, its appeal lies in the memories already attached to it, “When someone recognises an object or reference from their childhood, there is an immediate connection. It’s almost like a secret handshake between people who share the same memory.” And in a striking irony, it is precisely the old-school references that make the designs feel futuristic.
Pink tech
This analogue countercurrent also opens up a deeper conversation about what serious technology is allowed to look like. Cyberpunk has never been aesthetically neutral; its rugged casing and utilitarian codes have simply become accepted shorthand for technical credibility. Yet the moment that same hardware looks decorative or overtly feminine, it is more readily dismissed as decoration. Tan’s shell-covered cyberdeck makes that bias harder to ignore. “A sparkly seashell-covered cyberdeck will always look way less functional, even if they have the same specs,” she says. Her response to the rise of ‘pink tech’ is more complicated. While she appreciates the sisterhood it has created, she is wary of language that still frames women’s involvement in technology as a novelty. “Women are capable and so intelligent. Why are we repackaging patriarchy back to ourselves?” Looking pretty does not make an object any less well built and her cyberdeck proves exactly that. It also points to an older bias that fashion knows rather well: the assumption that beauty and seriousness cannot coexist.
System overwrite
As more creative output becomes increasingly automated, the analogue turn begins to look like something that’s more than nostalgia: a desire to wrest some control back. It is also a question of authorship—of the tools we use and the relationship we have with them. Goa-based artist Anomita learnt to solder at a Delhi makerspace, where she first began shaping the material by hand, a process that continues through the jewellery she makes today. “The shift towards retro technology comes from a desire to decentralise tech away from corporate control and interests,” she says. With greater agency over the process, the person behind the object has more room to come through. “Every choice I make in the objects that I use and surround myself with carries a part of me and my world, and that inevitably and particularly extends to technology, given its extreme ubiquity,” she adds. That personal imprint may also shape how clothes are made next. “I think there will be a renewed interest in old-school analogue knitting machines and code-based knitting,” she says, with much of the experimentation likely to come from independent designers.
Photography Zantz Han
Creative direction and styling Nicholas See
Beauty direction Emily Heng and Aileen Liang
Hair Ken Hong using Goldwell
Make-up Sarah Tan using Urban Decay
Manicure Melanny Tan
Photographer’s assistant Tan Peng Sheng
Stylist’s assistants Megan Lim and Lance Aeron
The September ‘Beyond the New’ issue of Vogue Singapore is now available online and on newsstands.
