TO The change of environment is underway in Silicon Valley. For eons, the tech industry’s movers and shakers signaled that they were serious people working on serious things through their simple outfits. Cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried (now in prison) always looked like he had rolled out of bed and forgotten to change out of his pajamas. The late Steve Jobs adopted a uniform with black polo collars. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg once boasted of owning and using multiple versions of the same t-shirt because it was efficient.
“I’m not a cool person and I’ve never tried to be,” Zuckerberg said in a question and answer session from 2014. “I really want to clear up my life so I have to make as few decisions as possible… I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on silly or frivolous things.” That attitude seemed to extend to his hair, which he has always worn short in a Lego style.
However, suddenly, technology executives seem to have abandoned their anti-style sentiment and developed a passion for fashion. There’s Jeff Bezos, of course, the poster child for muscular billionaires. Bezos has gone from looking like a skinny e-commerce nerd to the image of a ripped Hollywood supervillain. Gone are the ill-fitting shirts and chinos: the Amazon founder now struts around in trendy cowboy hats. Sunglasses and muscle t-shirts. One imagines none of which he got from Amazon.
Elon Musk has also had a spectacular makeover. The X CEO has gone from having a noticeably receding hairline to sporting lush locks. This could be the work of a benevolent God; or, according to rumors, an expensive hair transplant surgeon.
Like Bezos, Musk also dumped his ex unflattering buttons. He now loves his Top Gun-style pilot jacket and dresses up frequently, as a fashion writer for Washington Post Put like this, “like a caricature of mid-century rebellious masculinity.” While he used to wear colorful shirts (there’s a famous photo of him wearing a purple so bright it looks like a Dairy Milk bar), he now seems to have developed strong thoughts about color. Last year SpaceX workers told Reuters that Musk, the founder of the rocket company, discouraged them from using safety yellow because he doesn’t like bright colors.
Zuckerberg has always wanted to imitate other people’s ideas. Still, the fact that the guy who was once the dullest man in tech has now joined the fashion fray is quite a shock. When the founder of Facebook recently posted a video on Instagram of himself talking about Meta’s latest AI assistant, everyone’s jaws dropped. Zuck didn’t seem as robotic as usual; His hair was more voluminous and he sported a chain necklace. “I went from stealing my data to stealing my wife and kids,” one commenter wrote. Someone then took a photo of the video and added some facial hair and the doctored image quickly went viral. A bearded Zuck was Suddenly the hottest thing online. The billionaire even responded to a campaign urging him to grow a real beard with a photo of a razor along with a thinking face emoji.
This video was not the first evidence of what has been described as Zuck’s metamorphosis. It’s been seen everywhere in a statement shearling jacketand there it is a clip of him admiring a million-dollar Richard Mille watch at the glitzy pre-wedding event for the youngest son of Asia’s richest man. “The watches are great,” Zuck enthused. At the same wedding he wore a striking Alexander McQueen number. “Is Mark Zuckerberg getting fancy?” a popular menswear influencer tweeted in March, along with a collage of the 39-year-old’s outfits.
Elegant It’s an exaggeration. But Zuckerberg has certainly become a lot less beige. So why the change? Is it some kind of midlife crisis? Did she finally run out of things to spend his money on and he hired a stylist?
Maybe. But a cynic might consider the more likely explanation: that this is part of a broader strategic overhaul of the tech mogul’s public image. Meta finds himself involved in a antitrust lawsuit and is being sued by dozens of states alleging that Facebook and Instagram are exploit children to increase profits. Much better, don’t you think, if we all talked about how handsome a bearded Zuck would be instead of harping on Meta’s less attractive business practices?
Arwa Mahdawi is a columnist for The Guardian.
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