Is Apple’s $220 Pocket the Dumbest Fashion Product Ever Made?

It’s no secret that one of Steve Jobs’s favorite fashion designers was Issey Miyake. The former Apple CEO adopted the Japanese designer’s minimal black turtlenecks as part of the iconic uniform he wore on Keynote stages around the world, though apart from a mutual respect—and the facts that Miyake once appeared in Apple’s Think Different campaign and almost designed an Apple uniform—the duo never officially collaborated. Until now. This month, Apple releases a collaboration with Issey Miyake, marking the tech brand’s first union with a fashion house since the Apple Watch Hermès in 2015. The product? A curious-looking rectangle of 3D-knitted fabric known as the iPhone Pocket. Robust and cushioned, with stretchy pleats true to Issey Miyake’s iconic Pleats Please design, the accessory is designed to snugly hold any model of iPhone (as well as small essentials like AirPods or a chapstick). The iPhone Pocket comes in two lengths—one short enough to carry on the wrist and another that can be worn cross-body—as well as a spectrum of colors: three for the long design and eight for the short, that spans punchy brights like mandarin orange and peacock blue to subtler neutrals. The shorter version can also be tied up and used as a bag charm. Labubu who? Like Issey Miyake and Apple’s greatest designs before it, the Pocket is deceptively simple. “At first glance, you probably wouldn’t recognize what it is,” says Yoshiyuki Miyamae, design director of the Miyake Design Studio (Issey Miay