Really interesting & the fact they call Beats by Dre a "fashion accessory" is a subtle middle finger :)
I don't know about that. Headphones is headphones, or at least headphones was headphones. Then Beats "brandified" them, made them cool (cooler), make them shiny.
Some speculate that Apple bought Beats precisely their accessorizationability factor (yeah, yeah, it's early, I'm grasping for neologisms to summarize the concept). Basically, Beats figured out how to cost-effectively profitably mass produce many variations on a common product to increase cool factor and consumer choice.
Given ambient noise, compressed audio, and always-imperfect listening conditions, sound quality is definitely not the first thing most consumers look for (notice I didn't write listen for) in a set of headphones.
(I have decent reference headphones for the house, but elsewhere it just doesn't matter.)