The New York Times has gone as far as to label him a style icon. The new tech oligarchy, forged in the crucible of Trump-era chaos , has moved beyond the faux humility of Patagonia vests and Allbirds.
Their outfits do not merely say I have wealth. In many ways, this aesthetic evolution tells a larger story about the consolidation of power in the tech industry.
There was a time when tech billionaires maintained a carefully curated image of modesty—Elon Musk, for instance, once claimed to live in a tiny house on his sprawling estate. But now, that mindset has shifted. Luxury watches have long been markers of power, but Silicon Valley initially distanced itself from that tradition.
Jobs wore a humble Seiko. Bill Gates has never been one for flash. The shift was caught on video. The tech billionaires have long been aligning themselves with mythmaking, macho masculinity narratives. As a result, Musk reportedly dropped six figures on a vintage Paul Newman Rolex Daytona, a watch synonymous with masculine cool. He also added a Tesla-branded black cowboy hat to his rotation, a symbol of frontier bravado and lone-wolf individualism, evoking the mythos of the self-made pioneer—whether wrangling AI, space travel, or the X algorithm.
These phrases, steeped in imperialistic and warrior-like rhetoric, suggest a new, more aggressive self-styling that asserts power. The first sign arrived back in April , when an AI image of a bearded Mark Zuckerberg went viral on social media.
