Oftentimes, a new design idea comes from a purely functional need. I was inspired to create the headphone tacos because I was getting frustrated with having to rummage in my bag for my earbuds only to find them in a tangled mess.
I had seen other cord keepers on the market but often times they were in hard plastic cases that took up too much room in my bag, or made from flimsy materials that couldn’t keep the cords contained securely. As I am always striving towards a zero waste business model I begin to think about how to use up the small bits of materials left from my handbag designs.
My interns and I started experimenting with some of the spare parts left over from my flower pins and I realized that any symmetrical shape (a leaf or a round petal) cut from my leather scraps would work nicely. We tested out textures, snap placement, and the right sizes to encapsulate the cords we need to power the devices we use for our daily lives.
After a few test runs and trial and error with various leathers, taffeta, snaps and heat temperatures - we narrowed down the design to a clamshell-like oval for the headphones, and a large vintage-style leaf for laptop cords - which could then be embossed with a distinctive texture from one of many of my vendor’s 100 year old waffle-maker-like heat dies.
As a finishing thoughtful touch - we punched a round hole and a rectangular hole through the bottom to allow for any style of headphone jack to thread through, and centered a pearlized snap to secure the cord. Et Voila! Headphone tacos!
Now it is easy to find my headphones inside of your bag because you can feel for the distinctive texture inside your bag. It's a simple three-step process:
1 push jack through the bottom hole to secure
2 wrap cord around your fingers (keeping the earbud part at a safe distance)
3 coil inside center and Snap closed
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