Here is Peter Zottolo standing in the rain outside Peet’s on Chestnut Street not far from his home in the Marina, the neighborhood where he’s lived for 15 years. He is hard to miss.
Zottolo has silvery curls and is cradling his motorcycle helmet in the crook of his arm, his worn-in Canadian tuxedo look (the jacket is from Line of Trade; the pants are from Buck Mason) perfectly complementing his worn-in appearance. At a glance, his all-American style and rugged masculinity call to mind Robert Redford in his prime.
Zottolo radiates the sort of effortless cool that suggests the sort of experience that comes from life, not a curated Instagram moodboard. As we sit down to chat, I comment on his rugged look.
He smiles sheepishly. “It’s just how I get to and from work,” he says.
Zottolo, 50, has been an electrician for over a decade, working everywhere from the Transamerica Pyramid and Salesforce Tower, to the Chinatown-Rose Pak Muni Station. A proud member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 6, he currently serves as an electrician for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, a job he’s held for just over two years.
It’s good, steady work, but being an electrician is just his day job. Zottolo’s calling, even if he probably wouldn’t call it that, is fashion nerd, the kind of guy who obsesses over granular details in his clothing, and lives by a style code that feels both personal and bygone. (He probably wouldn’t call himself a fashion luminary, either, even if he is the frequent subject of Instagram moodboards, fan art, and street-style photographers.) He’s combined his inspired sartorial choices and his sharp photographic eye into @urbancomposition, where over 100,000 Instagram followers enjoy his immaculate Italian- and Western-inspired looks. With his longtime friend Derek Guy (aka the Menswear Guy), he co-hosts the Die, Workwear! podcast.
Unlike other fashion writers and social creators peddling this season’s must-have boat-ballet-loafer shoe hybrid or decrying the war crime of skintight, polyester-blend athleisure dress pants, Zottolo is more than the sum of his fits. His life is much more interesting, somehow, than it already looks on Instagram. Zottolo is not just a stylish electrician; he may be the most interesting person in San Francisco.
Born in San Diego into a working-class Italian-American family, Zottolo’s upbringing was modest to say the least. His father was a gardener; his grandfather and great-grandfather were fishermen. As a kid, Zottolo watched a lot of old movies, observing the Golden Age’s leading men and drawing inspiration from their style and their demeanor. Raised a devout Jehovah’s Witness, Zottolo still considers faith a core part of his life and worldview. While living in Oakland in 1997, he met his wife, Angela, at the Kingdom Hall in Berkeley. They married two years later.
After a decade or so bouncing around the tech industry from startup to startup, layoff to layoff, Zottolo was still searching for his purpose. He had already found fulfillment with his faith and his partner; what he needed was a calling.
A friend had told him about the San Francisco Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee’s program, sponsored by the IBEW and the San Francisco Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), the program trains electricians under a traditional apprenticeship and one of the last of its kind in the country.
“I’m not exaggerating, I barely knew how to swing a hammer at that point,” he said. “But I liked the idea of working with my hands and working in construction.” It also felt like a continuation of his family’s legacy working in trades, something passed down like an heirloom watch or a well-worn workshop coat.
So, in his mid-30s, Zottolo became an apprentice electrician. He was nearly twice the age of his contemporaries (they called him apprentice-saurus), but was committed to learning the trade since all of the people he knew who worked blue-collar jobs were still making good money and were still employed.
Around this time, too, is when he started his other apprenticeship in fashion.
To hear Zottolo describe it, it was wholly by accident: He was simply searching for square-toed shoes when he fell into the fashion arcana rabbit hole known as StyleForum.
StyleForum, for the not-terminally-online-in-2010 crowd, is a vintage internet forum full of sartorial devotees evaluating each other’s outfits, recommending suitmakers and shoe brands, and debating the merits of Italian versus English tailoring. He had found the forum a few years prior, but this time was different.
Wading through pages and pages devoted to dress shoes on StyleForum, he learned the lingo and what not to do. “There was, ‘why you should not wear square-toed shoes’ and ‘why the classic silhouette is more almond-shaped’ and then on Jermyn Street and Savile Row and blah blah blah,” he explained. “Then, it goes way into the weeds.”
In both realms, he was a quick study. After finishing his electrician apprenticeship, he found work at the Salesforce Tower, SFO Terminal 1, and on a few high-rise projects. On the style front, he figured out what works best for him: a mix of Italian-inspired tailoring, heritage workwear, and West Coast casual clothing. In the decade-plus that followed, he’s become a journeyman electrician and dresser, earning respect from his peers in both worlds.
In 2013, Zottolo launched his Instagram account as a way to chronicle his own outfits. He shoots all of his photos himself, usually with a tripod and either a Sony or Leica set to burst. Zottolo’s photos capture him around Crissy Field, waiting for trains, or taking in the sights in Europe. He gravitates towards props (cameras, typewriters, briefcases, pints of beer, or bottles of wine) and dramatic bits of flair, like scarves and the occasional Stetson. He often looks serious, but sometimes he looks into the camera, a hint of a smile in his eyes.
More than anything, Zottolo comes across in his pictures as a character of sorts: a regular guy doing everyday things while dressed amazingly. He does not come across as a wannabe model or would-be influencer. He can’t even imagine how he could. “To do that day in, day out constantly… Like, sometimes a creative idea will come to me, but if I had to think of that every day, I would be tapped out.”
As Zottolo’s followers have grown (his account has doubled since March), he has moved further into the fashion world. He is currently the American director at Swedish magazine Plaza Uomo, and has done brand campaigns for Brooks Brothers, Seiko, Hugo Boss, and Ralph Lauren. Then there’s the Die, Workwear! podcast, where he and Guy dole out fashion wisdom and history sprinkled with a bit of life guidance.
One day, Zottolo would like to retire from being an electrician and commit to fashion full-time. One dream would be to serve as an in-house consultant or photographer for a brand he admires. Until then, being the best-dressed electrician in San Francisco works for him, despite how improbable that may be.
As a hyphenate, union electrician-style influencer is an unusual one, but not entirely without precedent. In the ‘90s, Jenny Shimizu was a mechanic and gender-binary-shattering fashion model; before his breakthrough in Star Wars, Harrison Ford was better known around Los Angeles as a carpenter (and weed dealer). One reason Zottolo’s double life (double-knee pants by day; double-breasted suits by night) works is how at ease he seems in both get-ups. Neither part of his wardrobe feels like a costume: Whatever Zottolo is wearing, he comes across as a man in full.
“I’m fortunate in that I work in construction, but then I’ll go out on a date or I’ll go to the opera or I’ll go camping or I’ll go to a fashion show, or I’ll go to a religious service,” he said. “You can dress according to that occasion. It’s almost like an excuse to have a ridiculously large wardrobe.”
The thing that really makes all of it work is that Zottolo comes across as a gentleman in the most classic sense of the term: he can fix the wiring in your kitchen, but he’s just as interested in art and photography. There’s an openness about him; the masculinity he embodies isn’t hard or cruel.
“He’s a true gentleman, not in the socio-economic or performative sense of the term,” his friend and co-host Guy wrote in email. it: “He’s loving and kind to his wife, puts his friends first, and is considerate of strangers.”
Even in our brief encounters, I got a sense of how thoughtfully Zottolo navigates the world. About an hour into our conversation, a woman in a purple puffer jacket came into the coffee shop and interrupted us. “I was wondering who the attractive guy upfront was,” she said.
After she left, I asked him if that kind of thing happens a lot.
“Not really,” Zottolo said, flashing his full smile. Spoken like a true gentleman.
A version of this story first ran in print in Gazetteer San Francisco Issue 4.
