I Went Down an Olivia Rodrigo Pink-Headphones Rabbit Hole
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When I watched Olivia Rodrigo’s new music video for “Drop Dead” this morning, the first thing I noticed were her retro pink foam headphones that look a whole lot like a $15 Retrospekt pair that’s sold at Urban Outfitters. (The second thing I noticed is that they don’t seem to be connected to anything, as many other fans have also commented on.)
The video, which was directed by Petra Collins and shot at the Palace of Versailles, is full of Easter eggs, including a version of Jane Birkin’s dress from the 1975 film Catherine et Cie,and references to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. At one point, Rodrigo also plays a bubblegum-pink Fender guitar that’s not dissimilar to the one Kirsten Dunst played in the late ’90s and early aughts. I am a child of the ’90s and a Rodrigo fan, so the video’s grainy, camcorder-esque film style and throwback vibes are making me yearn for my teens. Finding the pink headphones seems like the quickest way back.
After a thorough search for other vintage-style (and actually vintage) on-ear headphones with pink foam ear pads, I was pretty sure the ones she’s wearing are, in fact, Retrospekt. But one small detail gave me pause: a silver logo that looked like an O on the black plastic. Retrospekt’s headphones don’t have that. So I slacked my colleague, Strategist tech writer Jordan McMahon, who has written about headphones many times. He agreed that Rodrigo’s look close to the Retrospekt pair. But then he realized that on Rodrigo’s merch site, the singer is selling a pink cassette player and headphones that bear a cursive OR logo. The cassette player isn’t exactly my style, but even if it were, the set costs $65 and won’t start shipping until July 17. And the matching headphones still appear to be slightly different from the ones she is wearing in the video.
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I watched the “Drop Dead” video, and the BTS footage that Rodrigo posted on TikTok, over and over again, trying to get the perfect screenshot. The pink foam on the merch pair is more of a powder pink than the bubblegum pink on the ones in the video. Another difference is that, while the headphones she’s wearing at Versailles have an adjustable headband that’s similar to the Retrospekt pair, with the silver metal arms on the outside of the black plastic part, the merch pair has them on the inside. But the bit that connects the headband to the center of the earpiece looks more round in the video, whereas Retrospekt’s is comparatively quite angular. Maybe the pair she wore while shooting the video was just an unfinished prototype of her own merch that changed a bit in final production.
@livbedumb drop dead is out now!!!! 🩷🩷🩷🩷🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼💋💋💋💋 @Petra Collins @chateaudeversailles
♬ drop dead - Olivia Rodrigo
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Because I am obsessed and must know the truth, I reached out to the video’s stylists — sisters Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo — to see if they could tell me more, and I’ll update this story if I hear back. I also emailed Retrospekt’s creative director, Michael Kempen, and learned he’d gone down a similar rabbit hole: “I have now watched this video like two dozen times and I still really can’t 100 percent tell. It’s funny that you can watch this in HD but the footage itself is compressed to make it look old, stylistically. Which I appreciate. But also, I can’t get pause on a crisp shot of these headphones,” Kempen wrote back.
“There is definitely something extra on the earpieces. I think they’re likely our headphones with a sticker on them,” Kempen added. “Ours are definitely the same vibe. If they are different, they are so close to being the same that I struggle to say one way or the other.”
As for whether Rodrigo’s headphones could be a true vintage pair: “No vintage model comes to mind that I know of, but these things were a dime a dozen in their time,” Kempen said. “One thing I’d add, though, is that vintage models are usually pretty grimy. Pink wasn’t a color you saw a lot, and the foam can be in rough shape (missing, falling apart, etc.). Just from a prop-acquirement standpoint, it seems logical that it’s a new model.”
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For now, because they are so affordable, I think I’ll buy the Retrospekt pair before they sell out. But it’s worth noting that Retrospekt also sells replacement pink foam pads that you can put on any pair of on-ear retro headphones you want as well as refurbished vintage headphones you can add pink foam pads to. The pink pads will also fit the retro Koss Porta Pro headphones my fellow Strategist writer Brenley Goertzen wrote about back in 2022.
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