Now airpods are in vogue.
Social perceptions easily change, especially when there are billions of dollars invested in making them change.
I do think the AirPods metaphor is good but for the exact opposite reason: AirPods were the first "true wireless" stereo earbuds on the market with both a working microphone and reasonably good pairing and activation capability (at least with iPhones).
Previous Bluetooth headsets were either mono, for phone calls only, which quickly and probably correctly got associated with obnoxious salespeople yelling about deals in airports, or connected stereo affairs, which were generally strange looking and unwieldy. And the 2 or 3 "true wireless" offerings on the market ahead of Apple were hampered by hobbyist quality and poor Bluetooth behavior. AirPods offered a meaningful and substantially improved utility over their predecessors - not just a glossy style or some kind of marketing driven social change.
In this same way, true augmented AR offers genuine advantages over passthrough AR, in terms of comfort, safety, and utility. If the technology can be made to work augmented AR is likely to win over any kind of passthrough AR for reasons of utility, not just fashion.
Before airpods wireless earbuds looked like this: https://www.lg.com/us/bluetooth-headsets-headphones/lg-HBS-7...
In all cases, I think it was more the “look how I’m more interested in my own world than in people around me” than the actual looks of the device.
Possibly, the fact that early portable tech typically is fairly impractical (for example in battery life or in base ergonomics) added to that.