When Cali-based design consultancy RKS decided to tackle a series of headphone designs, CEO Ravi Sawhney put together an all-female A-Team comprised ID'ers with unusual backgrounds--an accountant, a competitive snowboarder, a microbiologist and a painting prodigy. (Soyun Kim, Leah Thomas, Young Bang, and Hojin Choi, respectively.) He then "set them loose to explore blue-sky headphone concepts," and the result is Vestalife's new line of earbuds: Pictured up top, the BumbleBee, the Scarab and the Boa.

The team first mapped competitor products, which were largely sporty or technology-driven designs. Realizing that a woman's sense of style was clearly missing from these offerings, the designers saw a strategic opportunity to bring higher fashion to the headphone market.

"What we really wanted to do was create designs that looked more like earrings than earbuds," Soyun explains.

"With more traditional earbuds, the design stops at the body," explains Leah. "We chose to bring attention to the cord, treating it, too, like jewelry that was meant to be displayed, not hidden."

"By wrapping the cord in fabric, it is transformed from ordinary of electronics into something that evokes the look and feel of a necklace," says Soyun.

Each design features different touches that have been incorporated for one of the most important physical needs of earbuds: How to pop them in, and more importantly out without just inelegantly yanking on the cord, as I tend to do. The Bumblebee features a soft cover over the bee-looking rings that can be pinched for handling; the Scarab accomplishes this with a sculpted pinch-grip; and the Boa's finger purchase is provided by the cord itself, which wraps around the earbud like a you-know-what.

The new line of earbuds, which won iLounge's "Best of Show" at CES, should be available later this year.