Apple's $230 iPhone sock went viral. Now clones are flooding the internet

When Apple released its designer iPhone sock, the internet dismissed it as ridiculous. But the scorn didn’t stop sales for the accessory; demand surged, and the collaboration with Japanese design house Issey Miyake quickly sold out.

Apple marketed the bag as the “iPhone Pocket,” pricing the short version at $150 and the cross-body variant at $230. Both models are now unavailable online and in stores, helped along by the product’s timely entry into an already massive trend, especially in Asia, where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cross-body iPhone holders have sold, according to Bloomberg. The design is essentially a high-fashion evolution of Apple’s original $29 iPod sock, which Steve Jobs debuted to laughter in 2004.

Apple's official Pocket may be scarce, but knockoffs are now popping up everywhere, from a few-dollar version on the Chinese e-commerce site AliExpress to nearly $100 fakes on Amazon listed by a retailer in Gujarat, India. Etsy, in particular, is flooded with dupes, many of which are priced around $20 or $30. 

But before you snap up a generic version, you might want to do a little more research into the fabric quality and conditions under which any knockoffs were made.

If you have time on your hands this holiday season, you could also try making your own. There are knitting patterns for sale on Etsy to help you DIY the iPhone Pocket, although you have to watch out for those now, too; some users of generative AI tools have flooded the market with bogus knitting and crochet instructions, proving there's no corner of the internet too niche for AI slop.