British menswear designer Andrew Buckler jokes that when he first met technology entrepreneur Nick Dangerfield, their conversation went something like this: "I'm developing a button." "No, I'm developing a button!"

Buckler was looking to street art and graffiti painting for inspiration for his Fall 2011 collection. He had just come up with using bright yellow button pins as a signature accessory. He wanted some other element to bring street style into the runway looks.

Enter Dangerfield, who is debuting Playbutton, a new music technology that fits into the same kind of button pins that Buckler was using.

Playbutton is both like and unlike a MP3 player. You plug in headphones and listen to music. But like a vinyl album, it is self-contained. Music cannot be downloaded to a computer or uploaded with new content. The music starts playing as soon as earphones are plugged in, and user-control is limited to skipping around songs and volume. It is recharged via a USB plug into a computer.

Buckler's Playbutton will host the debut album by Bubbles, a NYC synth-pop duo. In another coincidence, Bubble's album art features a bright yellow duck that matches some of the electric yellow accents in Buckler's menswear line. "Yellow was already a predominant part of the collection. We sat there for an hour in amazement," Buckler said. "The yellow! The buttons! Ahh!" he laughed.

"I can't imagine clothes without music," the designer said.

At Buckler's Friday show, models will be outfitted with yellow headphones plugged into Playbuttons for the full experience.

The designer recognizes that in today's re-mix world, there may be some resistance to an musical object that can't be altered, but he embraces Playbutton's fixed nature. It's not unlike the physicality of clothes, he says.

Playbutton was also a metaphor for the street art that served as Buckler's collection's inspiration. "Once the artists worked on a wall, it's fixed until someone comes and paints something else," he said.