Haute couture has shifted its gaze from the catwalk to the world of high technology as the world's top fashion houses jostle to stamp their exclusive labels on mobile handsets and other personal devices.

Italian fashion designer, Giorgio Armani, is the latest to direct his talents to mobile phone design, with the joint launch last month of a credit card-sized 3G phone with Samsung.

The shiny 9.9mm-thick touchpad phone is intended to reflect Armani's signature simplicity. Expected to cost somewhere around the $1000 mark, Armani says the phone was designed to cater for "those who aspire to own a technologically advanced and beautifully designed telephone".

Much like the recently launched LG Prada KE850 phone - retailing in Australia for $999 - the Armani phone has followed Apple's lead and done away with the traditional keypad, leaving users with a compact, glossy handset prominently displaying the designer's label.


"The idea was that we wanted to create a phone that felt like a natural part of Armani line-up. To do that it had to echo the general theme that he puts forward in his fashion label," says Kurt Jovais, Samsung's general manager of marketing.

Although cynics might argue that collaborations with the likes of Prada and Armani are little more than a branding exercise for the handset makers, both LG and Samsung are quick to emphasise the input made by their new partners.

LG says Prada's involvement in designing the KE850 extends well beyond simple aesthetics into the phone's touch screen interface, ringtones, content, and accessories.

Armani, who presented his namesake mobile phone at a press briefing in Milan before his Spring/Summer 2008 women's fashion show, is similarly credited.

"While the Armani brand certainly does help, we're not relying on a brand association in order to put this phone forward. This is a beautiful phone in its own right and one of the reasons why it is so is because it was co-designed with Armani," says Mr Jovais.


Samsung's partnership with Armani is not the handset maker's first foray into the fashion world. It has previously collaborated in one-off projects with the likes of Betsy Johnson, Diane von Furstenberg and Anna Sui to create phones that strongly echo their unique design style.

But fashion can be fickle and one high profile fashion partnership that has not stood the test of time is Motorola's collaboration with Dolce & Gabbana last year.

Motorola said the partnership with D&G, which resulted in a line of gold and silver models for its popular Razr phone, served as a vehicle to launch its own luxury handset designs.

Source:http://www.smh.com.au/news/articles/taking-a-fashionable-turn/2007/10/09/1191695878682.html