Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Threads, is worth an estimated $217 billion. Until recently you wouldn't have known it from his wardrobe choices.
On Tuesday, Zuckerberg posted a video online explaining that Meta would be rolling back third-party fact-checking across Facebook and Instagram and inviting more political content. He outlined this while wearing a baggy black T-shirt, messy hair, a now ubiquitous gold medallion around his neck, and a rare Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 watch.
The watch, entirely hand assembled, decorated and machined, is one of only three made yearly and costs $895,500 (Dh3.2 million).
Since founding Facebook in 2004, little has changed in the way Zuckerberg dresses, with unwavering loyalty to the tech bro uniform of T-shirt, hoodie, jeans and trainers. Sported by other Silicon Valley chief executives and those around the world who try to emulate them, other fans of the pared-back look have included Sam Bankman-Fried, who, before being jailed when FTX collapsed, always looked laid back to the extreme, despite running an operation once estimated to be worth $26billion.
A simple uniform to eliminate decision fatigue is not a new idea. Albert Einstein had multiples of the same grey suit, while Steve Jobs rarely ventured beyond his wardrobe of Issey Miyake black turtlenecks, blue jeans and New Balance trainers.
In an interview in 2014, Zuckerberg explained why he favoured such a limited wardrobe. “I’m not a cool person and I’ve never really tried to be cool," he said. "I really want to clear my life so that 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 things that are silly or frivolous.”
Looking dishevelled quickly became a way for entrepreneurs in the tech startup world to establish legitimacy. Showing up too well dressed to a meeting might even harm one's chances of raising venture capital funding.
Zuckerberg had to quickly shift this thinking in April 2018 when he was summoned to a congressional hearing to explain why social media companies had failed to protect children from harmful online content. Perhaps sensing jeans and a T-shirt would not cut it in this context, Zuckerberg arrived in a slate blue suit, white shirt and light blue tie. With his normally messy hair cropped short, the overall look was so out of character it prompted New York Magazine's The Cut to pen a story titled Who's This Little Sweetie in a Big-Boy Suit?
When the hearing ended, it did not take long for Zuckerberg to return to his standard look and, in fact, the only difference in his dressing over the past two decades is not how it has evolved, but how deep his pockets have become. As his bank balance swelled from student to millionaire in 2006 and then billionaire in 2012, he has swapped high street for high-end, inadvertently delving into the "quiet luxury" trend via Loro Piana, (cotton T-shirt, Dh2,843) and Brunello Cucinelli (zip-fronted hoodie, Dh7,829).
Last year, however, he seriously upped his fashion game – presumably linked to his turning 40. He has grown out the crop into a halo of curls and, in February, he and his wife Priscilla attended Ambani's pre-wedding festivities in India wearing matching Alexander McQueen. His jacket, embroidered with dragonflies, retails for more than $7,000, while the flamboyant look he wore the following day, by Indian designer Rahul Mishra, is so ornate that it is listed as price-on-request.
In May last year, around his milestone birthday, he released an image of himself seated at his computer, with a thick gold chain around his neck and a graphic print T-shirt bearing the Latin phrase "Carthago delenda est", or "Carthage must be destroyed", the cry of Roman Senator Cato the Elder, who died in 149 BC.
In July, he uploaded a new Meta AI update that allows users to add a prompt to generate a new image, and he can be seen asking the app to imagine him, among other things, as a streetwear designer in LA. At other times he has been spotted wearing a sheepskin jacket, and even a collarless leather jacket.
At the Meta Connect event in September, he took to the stage wearing a boxy, oversized T-shirt printed with “aut Zuck, aut nihil," Latin for "either Zuck or nothing", and swapped mid-wash jeans for on-trend dark denim and adidas 4DFWD x Strung trainers (Dh1,399).
This look outlines the biggest shift in the tech billionaire's wardrobe – that while his clothes are better, the real upgrade is on his wrist. To finish this outfit, he wore an F P Journe's Centigraphe Sport Aluminium watch.
Since attending the Ambani wedding, where he commented "watches are cool" after seeing the groom wearing a Richard Mille RM 52-04 Skull Blue Sapphire watch, reportedly worth almost Dh10 million, he has thrown himself into collecting.
He has already been spotted wearing a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar 5236P, worth around Dh500,000 and a De Bethune DB25 Starry Varius that starts at around Dh434,000. He also owns an F P Journe Chronometre Souverain Havana, which, in comparison, feels like entry-level at Dh145,000.
Now with the Greubel Forsey on his wrist, Zuckerberg is proclaiming he has outgrown his dishevelled tech boy image, and is now a collector of note, even if the rest of us still see him as a little sweetie with a big-boy watch.
