* Illustration: Kagan McLeod * The right shades or tie might complete your look, but a well-selected gadget can articulate your ambitions, politics, and discriminating taste. The key to choosing the perfect techcessory? Use the fashion industry's trick: Watch the pros.
1
Occupation: Starlet
Archetype: Paris Hilton
Accessory: iPhone
Think famous, sexy, shiny, and new. Not only is the iPhone the hottest carry-thing since an Ethiopian orphan, it's also your mobile personal portfolio. It totes your latest headshots, the demo you just recorded with Timbaland, your boyfriend's new movie trailer, and (most important) the digits for your agent, lawyer, dealer, and overbearing mother.
2
Occupation: Actor and Academy-Award nominee
Archetype: Leonardo DiCaprio
Accessory: Toyota Prius
When it's time to show up at a public event, lock the Chevy Compensator in the garage and roll up quiet as the fog in your egg-shaped hybrid. Sure, the Honda Civic Hybrid has similar greenhouse gas emissions — but nothing screams I'M GREEN like a Prius. You can always tell yourself that you do it to inspire others to go hybrid as well.
3
Occupation: Web-nouveau entrepreneur
Archetype: Kevin Rose, Digg.com
Accessory: Nintendo Wii
It's this decade's Razor scooter; the Wii is the essential office distraction for any fun-loving Web 2.0 chief. It demonstrates that you get technology and that you're a little bit quirky, just like the Web itself! Better yet, Wii is the new golf, the game of choice for striking a deal with — or just humiliating — a business rival.
4
Occupation: Junior vice president of marketing, Eastern Division
Archetype: Andy Bernard, The Office
Accessory: BlackBerry Pearl
An up-and-comer who must demonstrate both business acumen and a winning personality, you need the mullet of mobiles — business up front, party in the back. It scarfs down email like an NSA wiretap, but it's also loaded with multimedia skills and has an industrial design that won't render you a nonstarter at speed-dating events.
5
Occupation: IT sysadmin
Archetype: You know the guy
Accessory: mimobot R2D2 USB thumb drive
Ostensibly, this is for thwarting system failures and booting Linux from any machine anywhere in your network, all the while showing off your geek cred with a little '80s droid action. In reality, it's where you store all the porn you surreptitiously scrape from your coworkers' machines.
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