No one’s fit pics have inspired as much discourse online as Mark Zuckerberg.
Sure, you’ve got Jeff Bezos’ divorced-guy style, maximalist printed button-downs. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has his stable of supple leather jackets. Even Marc Benioff has palled around with quiet luxury kingpin Brunello Cucinelli to underpin his humanistic capitalism ambitions with $2,000 sweaters.
But, for better or worse, no one is doing it like Mark Zuckerberg, who’s been spotted making some big sartorial swings in recent months. Some Alexander McQueen, a shearling-lined suede coat, and, of course, some chains on top of his usual black tees. And he cares about his fits too, at least enough to issue a correction to a New York writer who misidentified the sweater he wore to the Allen & Co. conference "summer camp for billionaires" in Sun Valley. And here’s the thing: He doesn’t look terrible. (The Menswear Guy decreed it himself, so it must be true.) It's just incredibly costume-y, out of character for the dude who famously wore a grey T-shirt and jeans for years.
His latest viral fit came during his 40th birthday celebration, where he recreated his childhood bedroom, his dorm at Harvard, and his first apartment, complete with mini-mattress on the floor. A shirt with the Latin phrase Carthago delenda est, or “Carthage must be destroyed,” a rallying cry he’s used in the past when Google was nipping at Facebook’s heels. Read into that as much as you want. But I’d rather talk about his shoes for a second.
Zuckerberg wore a pair of Genesis sneakers from the Swedish brand Axel Arigato. (A spokesperson for the company confirmed his sneaker choice to Gazetteer.)
It’s a far cry from the sneakers he wore when Facebook first launched. He pitched himself at the start as the sort of guy who was singularly focused on putting out a world-changing product; he simply had no time to think about sneakers. During his hoodie-and-T-shirt era, he famously wore a lot of Brooks running shoes, then pivoted to a pretty utilitarian set of Nikes: the Flyknit Lunar 3s in the wolf grey colorway and the Nike Free RNs in all-black.
His recent sneaker choices have been chic-er. Between these Axel Arigatos and the beige-y New Balance 574s he wore at a recent MMA match, he’s aiming to be less “guy who wears running sneakers everywhere” and “guy who wears trendy running sneakers everywhere.”
Especially as people have scrutinized his sneaker game for years, you get the sense that he wants to come off as someone who cares about things other than boosting shareholder value or maximizing DAUs. He’s a guy who looks cool — or at least, looks like he’s emulating r/malefashionadvice or the Aime Leon Dore catalog. While his peers are catching heat for their private jet collections, for pissing off shareholders, or for allegedly two-timing A-listers, he’s running 5Ks and doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and getting swole when he’s not shilling the metaverse or the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. He’s just one of the guys.
San Francisco tech guys will follow his lead. That’s why the sneakers he wears are influential. They’re easily imitable. They’re the easiest thing for an entry-level software engineer who admires Zuckerberg to snag. Most people can’t afford a McQueen suit or want to wear a shearling jacket in San Francisco’s perpetually mild weather, but more can cop a pair of $250 sneakers.
The style is also the sort of thing that a tech dude looking for a glow-up could pick. They’re not as oversaturated as the On running sneakers that have taken white-collar San Francisco by storm. They’re a little bit more visually arresting in their chunkier silhouette than the Common Projects that every mid-level director in San Francisco apparently seems to own, while still being fairly minimalist.
All this is to say: Don’t be surprised if you see a lot more of these sneakers — and soon enough, gold chains and shearling coats — around the Financial District.
