Every once in a while, someone tries to combine the disciplines of mobile phone technology with high street fashion. Sometimes it’s not too bad – a bluetooth company called Novero is displaying it’s wares at MWC this year, and they were eye-catching enough for me to stop and find out more…

Novero launched in 2008, with a range of bluetooth headsets that it hoped were both funcional and nice looking. As time has passed, the company has focused more and more on the “nice looking” part of that that equation. Once of the results is this bluetooth headset/choker:

The basic shape there remains the same across the range, but there are various colours and styles available. Taking pride of place in the collection is the Premier headset, a combination of necklace and headset:

There is some clever stuff going on there. The earpiece is actually at the end of one of the strands of “pearls” there that connects to the central piece. To answer a phone call, you simply unhook the strand and put the earpiece in place – a previously invisible strand of wire keeps the necklack from slipping or falling off. This is the highest range piece they do, and is entirely customisable. It’s a bespoke necklack, made to your specifications. And, as a result, it’s pretty damn expensive – thousands of dollars at least.

But, as Novero explained to me, it’s not the expensive pieces here that are the main focus of the company. These are just a way to attract attention – in the same way that Tiffany’s will have a display of necklaces worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the biggest selling items are 200 dollar sterling silver items.

What we think?

I’m very interested by this – I am extremely passionate about fashion, but I like the way Novero is approach this. Previous attempts to combine fashion and mobile have resulted in crude, diamond encrusted handsets, or the disastrous make-up mirror/mobile from D&G. Novero is approaching it from the fashion side first – take an item of apperal, and build mobile functionality into it, not the other way around. Now, I have no idea whether or not people will actually LIKE the jewellry they’re making. The fashion world is notoriously difficult to predict. But I think Novero has the right attitude for this. It will be launching a new catalogue and range of products in the near future. In the meantime, you can see it’s current range here:http://www.novero.com/#