Fendi    Nancy Gonzalez    Tech Cases

Are designer iPhone cases too much or just enough?

Not long after the annual summer release of a new iPhone comes an inevitable parade of ways to personalize and protect your new gadget. Those options range from rubber cases that can be had for $19.99 at your local Best Buy to Louis Vuitton monogram sheaths that cost more than the phone itself (with a two-year contract, of course), and the prospect of choosing one can be quite the task indeed for style-conscious gadget-lovers.

Since it seems as though the iPhone 4 is making a case more of a necessity than ever, now is a good a time as any to talk about the odd submarket that has opened up for designer tech accessories. Would you spend a couple hundred bucks on a case for your phone, or are such things absolutely frivolous in your mind?

In many ways, the purchase of an iPhone or iPad is a style-conscious decision from the outset. Not only are Apple products notorious for excellent industrial design, but the company actively markets itself to people that value aesthetics in everyday life. It only makes sense that some of those people also enjoy significant expendable income, part of which they’re willing to expend in order to make their favorite gadget as pretty as can be.

Are you one of those people? Surprisingly, I’m not. I don’t have an iPhone (I have philosophical issues with AT&T), but my Blackberry is eternally covered by a boring black case, mostly because I’m convinced that I will one day drop it in a toilet (I worked at Best Buy for three years in college, it’s astonishingly common). If that happens, I don’t want to be out as much as a couple hundred bucks for a ruined case as well as a phone.

(From left: Nancy Gonzalez, $385 via Net-a-Porter; Fendi, $60 via Net-a-Porter; Rick Owens, $150 via Net-a-Porter.)

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