Do you think that sort of classic American look—the Ralph Lauren, the Oxford shirt—is that going to be sort of the purview of MAGA forever or do you see that changing?
I don’t think the classic American aesthetic is strictly MAGA, though. I think a Brooks Brothers look is like the ABC of menswear; that’s like a very classic American tailored look. In the postwar period, right after the end of the Second World War, there was a culture clash between establishment lifestyle–the man in a grey flannel suit, who works in a corporate job and has a conventional kind of nuclear family and white picket fence house—and the counterculture. That was this kind of liberal side of the political spectrum. They wore workwear and chambray shirts, hippie gear, motorcycle jackets. That all became counterculture.
But if you go back further than that, everyone wore tailored clothing, from criminals to CEOs to liberals and Republicans. Ralph Lauren could not have built his empire if button-down shirts and penny loafers were exclusively conservative attire.
I think it’s interesting that the current status of Republican politics is trying to unite the Brooks Brothers aesthetic with the gold sneakers. Do you see them coming together?
I think that’s the weird dichotomy at the moment, because the MAGA movement and Republicans in general have always been kind of looking back towards some idea of America. Even though not every man wore a suit in the 1950s, the suit has historically been associated with the kind of bourgeois lifestyle. And a lot of conservatism in general is about upholding bourgeois lifestyles, morality, identity, politics and so forth.
There is now a populist section of the Republican Party that’s not about Reaganism or Bush. It’s very about Trump. And its aesthetic is very different from what William Buckley would have worn. William Buckley would not have worn gold sneakers.
I think they are distinct and contradictory, but people can hold contradictory ideas in their head. We are in an age where politics is very tribal. And so long as it fits the narrative of our tribe, then I think it’s coherent for that group. For Republicans, I think those two very contradictory aesthetics are just now within the party.
The men of tech are new to the MAGA crowd, but many people have noted a significant change in their looks, particularly Mark Zuckerberg’s. Can you talk about what they’re trying to signal and to whom?
I heard from through the grapevine within my industry that [Elon Musk] used to have a stylist. I don’t think he has a stylist anymore. Mark Zuckerberg denies having a stylist, but I don’t believe him. He is certainly going through a style transformation in the last year and three months, I would say. Jeff Bezos most obviously has a stylist. I don’t think what they’re doing has anything to do with politics. I think Jeff Bezos went through a style makeover after his divorce. And I suspect Mark Zuckerberg just got tired of dressing like a college student. Elon has clearly given up on his stylist and doesn’t dress very well.
[Zuckerberg] dresses more like an MMA guy. He is wearing the boxy tees and the gold chain. But he looks like someone who updated his look to be trendier. There are a lot of guys wearing that kind of silhouette and gold chain and I don’t know that that says anything about their politics.
We saw a lot of the sort of “spaghetti Western” vibe happening. What’s your take on that?
As a fashion trend, the Western look really leans more liberal, right now, because it’s popular in big cities. Conservatives now dress like metrosexuals in the early 2000s and liberals dress like Bush-era conservatives. Conservatives are in slim-tight suits or slim-fit suits and then liberals are like Carhartt double-knees, Western shirts, cowboy boots. There is some of this inherently on the right because it’s a Midwestern look.
But Elon Musk does wear cowboy boots pretty frequently, as does Jeff Bezos.
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