Unpair your AirPods and chargers be damned. Wired headphones – the once infuriatingly tangled white cord tethering us all together – are booming after five straight years of tech advancements and subsequent declining sales.
We are plugging back in, so much so that there was a 20 per cent wired headphone revenue surge in the first six weeks of 2026, bringing the tech accessory back from the brink after it suffered a $42m (£31.2m) drop in 2024.
For the style set, this isn’t a surprise. Vogue declared the “humble” wired headphones to be on the up as far back as 2019, heralding the model – and Gen Z’s all-round Y2K fashion It-girl – Bella Hadid, the leader of the movement after she was spotted sporting a pair alongside some Prada boots and a grey slate coat at New Orleans International Airport.
The wired inclination spread quickly through showbiz circles, with a cool crowd of stars, including actor Zoë Kravitz, Euphoria star Zendaya, Normal People’s Paul Mescal, “Denial is a River” rapper Doechii, supermodel Emily Ratajkowski and nepo babies du jour Lily-Rose Depp, Apple Martin and Kaia Gerber all following in Hadid’s well-styled footsteps.
Social media soon saw the somewhat antiquated item as a status symbol. “It’s becoming a class thing,” one viral tweet read alongside an image of Robert Pattinson and Depp in earbuds. “Wearing wireless 24/7 tells me you don’t own any land,” they added, to 16,000 likes of agreement.
By 2021, the Instagram account Wired It Girls – now with 20,000 followers – had spawned. Brands clocked the trend and soon Apple’s white wired headphones (once free in the box with a new phone) began to pop up in high fashion campaigns, notably Balenciaga’s 2025 shoot with model Mona Tougaard and, most recently, activewear label Vuori’s Spring/Summer campaign with Gerber. Chanel even released their own pair of wired headphones, which can be yours for a less humble £12,600.
For the everyman, though, the price of wired headphones is a plus point that’s seemingly bolstering the boom in the return to simpler, less technologically advanced times. Apple’s wired EarPods now cost £19, while in-ear AirPods sit at a minimum of £119 and a maximum of £219.
Our growing aversion to Bluetooth has everything to do with it, too. According to audio experts, you still get better sound for your money with wired headphones. Plus, you don’t suffer any compression, battery or unsexy connection issues. “Bluetooth does not work,” Kravitz stated in a recent interview. “It’s ruining important moments. Imagine the amount of times that you’re with someone on a date, you’re trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!” she mourned.
Wired headphones are the latest in a long list of almost obsolete gadgets that have wormed their way back into Gen Z consumers’ hearts to the surprise of tech retailers. Flip phones, iPods, digital cameras – and even cassettes are now considered by young people to be fashionably vintage.
“I’m not surprised,” says the Wired It Girls founder Shelby Hull of the surge in sales. “Wires are easily accessible, chic, low maintenance, low effort… I’m just happy to see [them] getting the recognition they deserve.”
There’s an aura to wired earbuds that’s simply cooler. They’re effortless, nonchalant, and don’t come in a prissy case or make a nerdy ding when they connect. If AirPods are the headphone equivalent of the modern vape – wired earbuds are the timeless cigarette in terms of clout. They’re a rugged, tangled – and supremely unbothered – piece of technology.
At a time when Big Tech companies are pushing their latest upgrades on consumers by making old products incompatible with the world at large (Apple ditched headphone jacks on iPhones in 2016, followed by Google’s Pixel and Samsung’s Galaxy), wired headphone wearers are opting out. It’s a small, chic act of rebellion – that will always be just a little bit cool.
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