Tech billionaires' fashion is "a subtle demonstration of status"

Remember the version of Mark Zuckerberg whose wardrobe mostly consisted of gray T-shirts? That young Zuck feels leagues away from today’s Mark Zuckerberg, who’s now designing his own streetwear-inspired T-shirts, emblazoned with Latin phrases, which he’ll occasionally accessorize with a gold chain. 

Zuckerberg isn’t the only billionaire tech founder whose personal style has evolved in recent years, having shed the traditional minimalism and subdued hues we’ve come to expect from business leaders for a flashier wardrobe befitting an A-list artist or entertainer. Jeff Bezos, once a man of clean-cut navy suits and traditional business wear, now dons tight white pants, maximalist print button-ups and shiny leather bombers. 

And it wouldn’t be a conversation about tech billionaires without mentioning Elon Musk, whose wardrobe of button-ups and suits has evolved into something more streetwear-inspired. These days, Musk seems more at-home in black skinny jeans, custom sneakers and monochrome MAGA hats (so far seen in canary yellow-gold and black).  

These tech titans’ wardrobes are far from what we’ve come to expect from our richest business executives (can you imagine Bill Gates or Warren Buffett in a silk butterfly-print shirt?). In their own unique ways, Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos are rejecting the pseudo-modesty of “stealth wealth” or “quiet luxury” — perfectly tailored shirts, designer sweaters, baseball caps the average passerby would never guess cost $700 — introduced to the non-billionaire class in HBO shows like “Succession” and “Industry.” 

In those shows, multimillionaires and billionaires adopt this style of “quiet luxury,” defined by Vogue as “a look that will stand the test of time, as it’s essentially a synonym for elevated basics,” in order to subtly express their status among others in their peer group, but otherwise retain the freedom to blend in among the masses. 

But according to Carolyn Mair, a behavioral psychologist who created the University of Arts London’s Psychology of Fashion department, the tech billionaires are “choosing not to adhere to the sartorial codes of old-money elites, who tend to favor refined, understated luxury.” Instead, the aesthetics of folks like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, and their rejection of traditional expectations, “highlights that they don’t need to conform to social rules, because they operate at a level where the rules don’t apply to them,” Mair told Salon in an email. “This is a subtle, psychological demonstration of status.”

Fashion psychologists like Mair study the behavioral science of fashion and all that goes into it: how we dress ourselves, how individuals use clothing to communicate and how things like cultural attitudes and social norms impact fashion. Dion Terrelonge, a fashion psychologist based in London, spoke about the “interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships” we have with our clothing. Sometimes, we wear clothes to communicate to onlookers; other times, we choose clothing that communicates something to ourselves.

All three billionaires, but Musk and Zuckerberg in particular, appear to be using style interpersonally, as a signal to onlookers that they’ve got more in common with traditional celebrities and public figures than those in tech, Terrelonge told Salon. “With them being these big, household names, they are probably looking more towards celebrities these days, and their style is communicating more celebrity,” she said.

“When you were in school, and you wanted to look confident, who did you look to? You looked to the popular kids,” Terrelonge said. “The popular kids these days are musicians, they’re athletes, they're performers. And what is that uniform they wear? It's the gold chains, it's the very conspicuous fashion.”

That might explain why these tech titans can look slightly out of place in gold chains and oversized jackets, Mair said. “Seeing artists, musicians and entertainers wearing these styles feels natural and authentic, as these professions are perceived as connected to the cultural and social contexts where these styles were born,” Mair said. “When business leaders wear streetwear, it can feel less like a natural expression of identity.”

“They appear awkward, even though they're trying to show that they’re dressing just like you,” Dawnn Karen, a fashion psychologist and the author of “Dress Your Best Life,” told Salon. 

In her research, Karen coined the phrase “fashion identity assimilation” to describe the ways individuals use style to gain acceptance by specific cultural or social groups. As individuals, we engage in this sort of assimilation all the time: We dress a certain way at work to communicate our professionalism to our bosses; we dress another way at parties to communicate that we’re up-to-date on the latest style trends. Most people, save for the most powerful and wealthy individuals, have to engage in this assimilation in some capacity. 

But billionaires, Karen noted, don’t have to engage in this stylistic assimilation. Their power doesn’t wax and wane depending on their clothing. 

“When the billionaires do it, you have to question it,” Karen said. “They have all the authority and the power in the world. They can pull a lever and everything moves. So, you gotta kind of question why they’re doing that.” 

Their wardrobes began to change around the time their interests evolved beyond the tech that made their fortunes. In 2018, The New York Times dubbed Bezos a “style icon” for his evolving tastes; this was a few years after Bezos bought The Washington Post and after his rocket ship company, Blue Origin, began conducting test launches. For Zuckerberg, Business Insider pegs his shift away from gray tees and toward jeans and luxe sweaters as happening around in 2018, a few years after he’d bought Instagram and WhatsApp. 

In 2021, Zuckerberg’s rebranding of Facebook to Meta signaled a shift in his aspirations beyond social media and toward artificial intelligence and virtual reality. A few years have passed since then, and Zuckerberg’s style has undergone further evolution; those sweaters and jeans are now Japanese silhouette T-shirts and gold chains. At a backyard disco party he threw recently, Zuckerberg wore a sequin floral bomber jacket over a drapey shirt unbuttoned to the mid-stomach. 

And we all remember where we were when Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022, expanding his corporate portfolio beyond Tesla and SpaceX. His style evolution began sooner, as seen in this photo of Musk and Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) in matching sneakers in 2020. One could argue that his evolution officially began in 2018, when he and Grimes made their debut as a couple on the Met Gala red carpet.

As Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg’s individual personas continue to transcend their tech roots, they are using clothing to communicate a different kind of power: one that isn’t tied to a single company’s stock price, or even their standing in a particular industry. 

In September, at an event for Meta developers, Zuckerberg wore a T-shirt bearing one of his designs: the Latin phrase, “Aut Zuck aut nihil" in a blown-out serif font — a riff on the Latin phrase "aut Caesar aut nihil," which roughly translates to "a Caesar or nothing." 

“They're communicating that they’re so much more than that. They're standing apart from their contemporaries, from their peers, and they're almost in this new peer group,” Terrelonge said.