What is ‘mogul style’? Why billionaire bland has had its day

It’s not that the outfits are necessarily bad, although many of them are. Have we lost something in the transition away from the coat-and-tie?

The business casual revolution of the 1990s and rise of tech billionaires in the early aughts supposedly ushered in a new era that freed employees from the shackles of dress codes. Mark Zuckerberg turned hoodies and jeans into a symbol of New Economy meritocracy, the uniform of whiz kid hackers shaking up the coat-and-tie aesthetic of traditional industries back east. In the digital economy, many imagined, the most successful companies would allow talented employees to wear whatever they wanted as they jumped around in colorful ball pits.

But as Facebook engineer Carlos Bueno wrote in his 2014 blogpost Inside the Mirrortocracy, we simply traded our hard-written dress codes for softly coded dress norms. The new world is actually not so free. The cognitive dissonance is plain to see on the faces of recruiters who pretend clothing is no big deal, but are clearly disappointed if you show up to a job interview in a dark worsted business suit. “You are expected to conform to the rules of The Culture before you are allowed to demonstrate your actual worth,” wrote Bueno. “What wearing a suit really indicates is – I am not making this up – non-conformity, one of the gravest of sins.”