Recent coverage of Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and their ilk suggests that we can glean something about style, fashion, or shopping from tech oligarchs. However, if these stories tell us anything, it is that we cannot. Tech oligarchs have no style. What's more, nothing about the way these men engage with fashion or their own wardrobes makes them more palatable or interesting.

These guys have overtaken culture. Their look used to be “stealth wealth” but is now tacky. Does that mean something? (Spoiler: no.) These executives' PR teams are making a concerted effort to fashion-wash their images to sell us surveillance glasses, or, if you’re Snap, bricks for your ears.

Displaying style is certainly one way to draw thoughtless admiration, and it's not hard to see how that could go a long way toward the public blithely tuning out AI’s imminent annihilation of jobs and maybe also humanity. But perhaps it’s time to just admit, now that their fashion preferences have been thoroughly excavated by the media, that there is nothing to see here. Personal style is a reflection of one’s soul. And if the way they dress reveals anything, it’s their total lack of one.

Last week, the New York Times published an interview with Zuckerberg about his style. Writer Vanessa Friedman listed his more objectionable qualities. He told her that he shops for himself on Instagram: “[Y]ou start buying some shirts, and then you get a lot more ads for shirts, and then you’re like, ‘OK, actually, these are better shirts than the ones I bought yesterday.’” (Asked if this is the kind of shopping experience that addicts users, he “gazed off into space” and then said, “No.”) He buys lots of Loro Piana, and personally picked out a pair of printed Loewe shorts that he wore to “billionaire’s summer camp” in Sun Valley. His lifestyle of yacht owning and meeting with world leaders demands, he said, that he “find the 20 polo-collared shirts that I like the best.” The “BUILDING IS MY LOVE LANGUAGE” T-shirt he wore to launch his AI Labubu wannabe was a custom piece by Amiri, whom Zuckerberg personally works with on such tops. The pants, apparently, were The Row.

Then there’s Jensen Huang, who wears a black leather Tom Ford jacket every day, one of which sold for $960,000 at auction in July. In a recent interview with CBS News, he said his wife buys them for him and he owns, “I don’t know, 30, 40” of the jackets. Why the uniform? “For everybody else, they probably had to make three or four decisions. I took that off my plate. It’s fantastic… the moment I wake up, I can be thinking about important things.” The same decision fatigue justification for a uniform has previously been given by Barack Obama, Zuckerberg, and others. Steve Jobs's uniform (New Balance sneakers, Levi's jeans, and an Issey Miyake black turtleneck) seemed to connect to his genius because his whole thing was making tech simpler and more tasteful. The same is not true, obviously, for a guy making AI chips. No one is showing up to dinner and plopping their Nvidia chip down on the table.

Women’s Wear Daily recently interviewed stylists to rich tech workers who credited these CEOs with influencing the look of tech more broadly. This may be true, but just because Zuckerberg got bored of wearing hoodies every day and owns The Row khakis, and just because Bezos likes iridescent tight suiting instead of boxy office pants, that doesn’t mean there is something to learn here about how to dress.

These guys have no original ideas about style. They are not discovering gems in archives or new brands that only they could afford, but rather, merely wearing some of the most popular labels (Tom Ford, The Row, Loewe). They are, like countless fashion and tech people before them (Tonne Goodman, Grace Coddington, Hedi Slimane, Steve Jobs, etc.), wearing uniforms, but wearing those uniforms without any panache. They are even admitting that, rather than thoughtfully edit their wardrobes, they’re actually just hoarders.

I can understand the media searching for a fashion story among this group of people. First of all, they are wildly rich. Rich people can buy the world’s most expensive stuff, which is presumed to be the world’s best stuff. If they’re wearing the best stuff in the history of stuff, they must own something stylish.

Also, consider how inescapable they are. Movies are coming out around this time about Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. This will result in red carpets, panel discussions, and awards campaigns dragging on for months that revolve around these men’s stories and images. They were the headlining guests at Anna Wintour’s Tech Gala. And our mindless doomscrolls regularly surface absurd snippets of information about them, like how Huang doesn’t know his own address or how Sam Altman makes pasta with surprising amounts of garlic.

Their cultural ubiquity is very 2010s Kardashian-esque. The tech billionaires may not have reality shows, but we have to consume their existences as though they do. They’re always launching stuff and hosting influencer events. They’re postponing dinners at Gwyneth Paltrow’s Hamptons house. They’re bloviating on the Goop podcast. And flocking to the state dinner with Xi Jinping like influencers to fashion week. Only, influencers wear stuff that’s fun to look at while these men just all wear the same thing — like the boy band from our nightmares.

Roger Lynch is stepping down as CEO of Condé Nast to become Mattel's CEO.

Highlights over his seven-year tenure include: declaring that Condé was "no longer a magazine company"; overseeing Vogue World as part of a push into experiential sponsorship opportunities (the company boasted the event generated $30 million in revenue last year); and saying backlash to the Met Gala this year over the Bezoses paying for it was "actually good."

Vogue published its own pro-Lynch article about his departure, which read: "During his tenure, he implemented a successful turnaround of the company. In 2017, Condé Nast lost roughly $120 million. In February this year, the CEO celebrated a fourth year of profit growth." It's not clear what the profit actually is, so maybe it went from 25 cents to a dollar. This could be Anna Wintour's savvy way of greasing Mattel to pay for the next Met Gala, Vogue World, or whatever other non-magazine, short form video-clipping opportunities they have coming. 

Lynch will remain on Condé's board.  

Prada talked to the Wall Street Journal about how it woos VICs, the very important clients who account for 40 percent of luxury sales. The brand brought 100 of them to its show at Milan Fashion Week where they were invited "exclusively" to purchase $20,000+ crocodile handbags that appeared on the runway the next day, along with $100,000 custom skirts. Additionally, "a small group of top clients" got to fly to French Polynesia to snorkel for almost a week.

The brand revealed this group spends $8 at Prada for every $1.13 it spends on wining and dining them. “What we are trying to do is to make an emotional connection. This is why we are building some hospitality, we are building some private spaces,” said Prada Group Chief Executive Andrea Guerra. In other words, we live in a world full of sweatpants and denim, and if brands don't create scenarios that afford VICs the opportunity to dress in full Prada looks, they won't have anywhere to wear them. 

John Galliano's Zara line was originally planned to launch in September, but it will now come out on October 1. They're calling it "Re{form}" with the curly brackets and everything.

Zara posted a moody black-and-white video teasing the line, featuring opera music and someone wearing what appears to be three hats.

Vogue, naturally, got a first look at the collection, which Galliano described in the story as "almost haute couture." The line is credited in the photos as "Re{form} Zara Authored by the Couturier John Galliano."

This is probably some of the best rebranding fast fashion could ask for. We'll see if consumers buy it — I'm guessing many will.

Some of the fastest-growing accounts on social media, according to recent dispatches from Garbage Day and Link In Bio, are AI. Some of these accounts use AI to repurpose human-made viral creator reels. Others are just weird AI characters, like this dude who's actually marketing for a meme coin. Just like misinformation on ye olde Facebook, this content travels.

Human creators cannot compete with this stuff. They cannot make these reels as fast and therefore cannot flood the zone with as many attempts to go viral. As Zuckerberg does interviews about his shorts, his platform allows these accounts to flourish to the detriment of human creators pouring hours into their feeds in an effort to support their art or newsletter or regional restaurant or whatever their job/passion project is. 

I wonder if the rise of this AI social media content is in part why this spring 2027 show season feels quieter than usual. The main beats of fashion month so far have been:

Jonathan Anderson's Dior collection, drawing on his previous motifs like hip humps and curly peplums, landed like a feather instead of with a bang, even with Rihanna in attendance. Can Anderson himself no longer compete with mustachioed AI characters? Has he been too busy doing costumes for the A24 movie about Sam Altman, one of the world's most blah dressers, to deliver a collection with the showmanship and creativity he's previously displayed?

Matières Fécales enjoyed a burst of social media fanfare at the start of Paris Fashion Week. Designers Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton's shows are performance art. This collection, titled “The Ninety Nine Percent” (their last show was about the one percent), featured 99 models of color, the final two of whom carried Jeff Bezos-like effigies on their shoulders down the runways. Selling this stuff to the world's richest people, while also mocking the world's richest people, has got to be the industry's latest and greates troll. (Condolences to Demna's $2,000 Balenciaga chips bag.)

The other standout moment so far has been Saint Laurent. Rumors have been going around that Anthony Vaccarello is leaving. Even Vogue said it "looks like goodbye" for him, and I doubt they'd print that if the brand didn't want them to. An all-gold collection does feel like the revenge dress of fashion shows, so maybe he is. It was the sort of display, down to the rather mesmerizing if utterly unwearable shoes, that could have been a fan's AI rendering of his work. Only, it was fabulouslyA real. 

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