My kids loved school uniforms. They didn’t have to spend time thinking about what to wear - they just grabbed a polo and khakis from the pile.
Senior year of high school I made sure both expanded their wardrobes before going off to college (shopping clearance sales of course). D, a junior in college, still prefers the uniform concept. When she finds something she likes - a t-shirt, sweater, pants, whatever - she tends to buy several in different colors. So she can totally relate to Zuckerburg. To her, spending lots of time worrying about outfits is senseless. However, there are other things in her life she does obsess over. Everyone has their priorities.
Well, we can agree to disagree BB! That’s not how I’m reading some of the thoughts and comments on this thread. I still don’t agree with that brand building schtick coming from him - my opinion!
BTW, my H hangs his tshirts on hangers. And he is fully style deficient!
I have a BIL who is only seen in T-shirts and shorts. Well, okay…long pants for Christmas and Thanksgiving. He irons his T’s and they reside with military precision, on hangers.
I see Mark Zuckerberg’s closet full of identical grey t-shirts as evidence of and the result of algorhithmic thinking and also the tendency to hone tools to eliminate distraction to maximize peak performance. He’s figured out what works best for him and sees no need to deviate. I see the branding as following from that, not driving the decision.
At least he doesnt require his employees to conform to his preferences. I had a friend who worked for Richard Meiers (the architect) in the 1990s. He required his employees to wear crisp white shirts everyday. Anything else was too visually distracting and interfered with his process.
His wife is Buddhist, and he has been studying Buddhism. Not wasting energy on material things is one of the central tenets. He shares more than his wardrobe with Steve Jobs.
He is a major player in tech far beyond Facebook. He’s not Tucker Max - at this point, he doesn’t really need a schtick to sell his products.
We all brand ourselves with what we choose to wear. Whether it’s MILF or cougar or suburban fit mom in Lulu or goth or bohemian or old-school preppy or nouveau-riche-designer or too-intellectual-to-care or just-don’t-care. I see nothing wrong with what MZ did / said / wore and the self-deprecation shows a nice and pleasing sense of humor.
I agree that “We all brand ourselves with what we choose to wear. Whether it’s **** or cougar or suburban fit mom in Lulu or goth or bohemian or old-school preppy or nouveau-riche-designer or too-intellectual-to-care or just-don’t-care.”
I brand myself “invisible”, which is the same as " just-don’t-care" and dress accordingly just to be decently covered with some reasonable clothes. I was not feeling this way before, but feeling this way is like getting another level of freedom. I am not there yet to have the same color in my closet, I will never reach this point as I simply stopped shopping and at the same time just got rid of a lot of clothes in my closet which is indefinitely smaller than MZ’s closet. Good for MZ that he is at this stage at much younger age than me. Great freedom and nothing negative!
"Jeans, black shirt, and black or grey sweater here. Only wear one pair of shoes per season. Currently tennis shoes and sandals when it gets warm.
It takes me all of 5-7 minutes to get ready in the morning and I love it."
It takes no more time to dress in something smart, stylish, or fashionable (according to one’s own lights) than it does to dress in something that isn’t. It doesn’t take Joe Business Casual more actual seconds or minutes to put on a button-down and khakis than it does MZ to put on gray t-shirt, hoodie and jeans. It’s not about the time saved in the actual physical dressing. It’s the time spent to have organized / purchased such a wardrobe in the first place and it’s the time saved in picking out what to wear.
My husbands colored tee shirts are on hangers in his closet:
because he is convinced they shrink if they go in the dryer, and so I put them on hangers to dry, on a hanging rod in my laundry area, and then just put them in his closet rather than take them off hangers and konmari them into drawers. Clothes do last longer if they don’t go in the dryer.
I agree with PG we all brand ourselves one way or another. I don’t see it as a negative he deliberately does that. If he didn’t understand he was doing it with wardrobe, he wouldn’t show us his closet. He wouldn’t understand why we would be interested. My kids, almost the same age, talk a whole lot about branding. It’s a pretty big concept for them, as far as I can tell and they talk about it as a positive concept, a good thing, though sometimes they are making jokes about their own personal “branding.” But they don’t pretend they aren’t doing it. fwiw
@nottelling - I also had a friend who worked for RM in the late '80’s/90’s. Sigh… there were events where he would pick things out of the trash that he thought could still be used - until his medicine would start working each morning.
I’m not an MZ fan, but I totally agree on simplifying in an area that doesn’t matter TO YOU. For me, like him, the simpler I can make dressing the better. And that includes not really enjoying the planning and buying and having the same things clean at the same time to make sure they match. For those who say that a well-planned wardrobe makes it just as fast, I’d say the planning, buying, and having it all ready takes away the simplifying.
I also almost never wear jewelry beyond my wedding ring, or “accessories” or make-up. Nor do I “do” my hair. I just try to get it to the not too messy looking state.
I’m sure this all falls into one of PG’s uniform categories (don’t-care-academic?) , but I’m not trying for a look per se. I’m just glad I’m working in an area where what I look like is allowable.
I think others being more into that is great–it’s just not meaningful to me, thus an area where the simpler and the least-time-consuming, the better.
I don’t have a set list of categories. I was being conceptual in nature :-). That’s ok. We all also “brand” ourselves in what we care about and invest a lot of time in (food? wine? books? music? travel?) and what we don’t (sports? reality shows?).
Here’s a recent example: A coworker was making small talk with me and she mentioned that “Jay Cutler’s wife was in some car accident.” So I said, “Who’s Jay Cutler?” She was all agog that I didn’t know who Jay Cutler was (apparently he plays for the Chicago Bears; I wouldn’t know if he’s a good player or a bad one, I wouldn’t know if he’s a saint or a jerk, and I wouldn’t know what he looked like if I tripped over him). We laughed about it, but to some extent that’s actually my “brand” at work - that I don’t know a lot about professional sports players / sports rivalries, and to some extent I’m kind of secretly proud of that. I mean, if it bothered me that I didn’t know about sports, I’m certainly smart enough that I could learn about it, but I choose not to and that’s kind of a statement I make to myself about who I am. The same way MZ is certainly capable of buying 15 different color shirts, but it’s a statement he makes to himself (and because he’s a public figure, to others) about who he is.
I have no embarrassment whatsoever about not knowing these things – there was some recent commercial for Nike called “Snow Day” that had dozens of famous athletes engaging in a snow fight. I watched it with my over-the-top sports-fans relatives and they were just appalled that I didn’t go - oh, that’s so-and-so! oh, that’s so-and-so. I didn’t! And I didn’t care that I didn’t know, at all. Oh well! It’s my brand, lol.
