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Of course that’s the exact opposite of the Cool Kids Herd Mentality propagated by Apple, and I want to make it clear that my disdain for that sort of thing is purely my opinion, and didn’t come from Aniyia. She more gracefully said “I gotta give Beats props across the board,” and yet we both agree that we don’t want to walk around looking like a DJ.

Just as we’re more prone to multi-tasking than our brethren, women tend to consider utility in multiple layers. Aniyia says, “We need it to do what it’s supposed to do, of course. But also, how does it make me feel? How does this fit into the scheme of all the other things I already own that I’m going to wear?”

As far as functionality, I got to try out a Dipper prototype and Drake and Future sounded fantastic in my ears. Some of the other, ahem, options out there don’t have the greatest track records for pure functionality, but the Tinsel team is determined to not go so far in the direction of style and design that the sound quality becomes an afterthought. Great headphones that are gorgeous still need to sound great, and these do.

Tinsel made the conscious decision to make their first audio necklace a wired design, which I admit surprised me until Aniyia succinctly said “Who’s gonna be mad about something you don’t have to charge? You just plug it in and it works.” I almost screamed in agreement at that, because part of my morning that very day had included what can only be described as a classic French farce of me turning on my Bluetooth headphones, un-pairing, syncing, and connecting in the settings fields of my two tablets, two laptops, and smartphone until the right ones were connected to the right device, only to have the battery poop out on me before the first song I was listening to was over. I’m fairly good about keeping my stuff charged, but as technology advances and we have more (wonderful) opportunities to utilize it, charging our miraculous items and keeping them powered becomes an increasing challenge. Nine times out of ten I end up using my wired headphones anyway.

Aniyia and her team are definitely working on a Bluetooth necklace design as well, specifically looking to make the charging as seamless as possible. She says, “I don’t want someone to have to think about the act of charging a piece of jewelry. That’s not what jewelry is. It should be something very natural.”

Tinsel is working on optimizing that charging conundrum, and they’re even looking into energy harvesting, where your own exertion powers your device, although that technology isn’t at a viable place yet anywhere on the market.

Still, the Dipper began as a thought and roughly a year later here I was wearing one around my neck. Indeed, Aniyia is looking forward to thinking about other places on the body to design for, also trying to incorporate wallet essentials into wearable to lessen the amount of things we’re carrying. Hinting at a very ambitious future project, Aniyia also told me she’s interested in “devices to tell women specifically what’s going on with their bodies,” but we’ll have to say tuned to see exactly how that fascinating idea manifests itself.

You can order your own Dipper right now, here. You can also support Tinsel at varying levels and be a part of what is surely a game-changing women-led company, at the ground level. Aniyia, who by the way is launching this company while six months pregnant, implores, “Let’s take things that are aesthetically pleasing and give those utility. Let’s redefine utility by giving those things qualities that are not only functional, but beautiful as well. That’s where I see this going. The audio necklace is just the start…I’m just gonna go, and I’m gonna keep going until someone tells me that I cannot go any more, until I hit an impossible obstacle. I’m gonna see how far I can take this.”

Very far, no doubt.

All images used with kind permission of Tinsel, professional photography by Thomas Kuoh

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