The fashion industry had an unexpected encounter with the USB memory market a few years ago, when segments of the hip-hop culture took to memory sticks as a form of necklace "bling" and demanded versions with 14-karat plating and embedded jewels. Matters of storage and fast interface suddenly took a backseat to packaging and style.

For years, industry watchers predicted that the same trend would occur in the handset market. But the slow rise of a true luxury phone spawned the retail after- market of celebrity cell phone covers, or "skins." The tipping point came with the launch of the Motorola Razr handset. Motorola chief executive Ed Zander announced with pride a few quarters back that Motorola had opened a shop in Hollywood to appeal to the demanding user-snob who wanted that extra-special Razr edition.

In theory, Zander aimed to pursue a path that Nike had taken to get back its street cred. After being pummeled by anti-sweatshop activists, Nike learned that the key to grabbing fashion sense again lay not in better advertising, but in creating buzz by selling "artist edition" shoes. And the shoes were sold only in a limited line of skateboard shops. Nike found that if a certain sneaker's total production was measured in the low hundreds, collectors would shell out a few hundred bucks for rarity alone.

But in Motorola's case, the Razr lost panache as quickly as it had gained it.

It could be argued that the handset as fashion accessory could serve markets like software-defined radio, as users decide they want "my Treo" with a mix of WiMax, GPS and W-CDMA. Practically speaking, however, the market will split into the low-cost GSM handset sector, for developing nations, and the seriously snobby smart phone with feature sets that change, like fame itself, every 15 minutes. It's hard to see how adequate profit margins could be maintained in either market.

There's also a question of how deep a branding campaign can go into baseband and RF chains. Executives at antenna manufacturer SkyCross have seen a detachable antenna for WiBro/phone platforms turn into a smart-looking key chain in its own right.

Those executives would certainly be pleased to have so many elements of system design become possible targets for Paris runway fame. But are designers ready for fleeting fashion design cycles? What looks like the ultimate VoWLAN-GPS-WiMax-W-CDMA-LTE phone today could easily generate the "That's so 10 minutes ago!" brush-off tomorrow.