Do you think this sort of classic American look—the Ralph Lauren, the Oxford shirt—will forever be somehow in the MAGA realm, or do you see it changing?
However, I don’t think the classic American aesthetic is quite MAGA. I think the Brooks Brothers look is like the ABC of menswear. It looks like a very classic American look. In the postwar period, just after the end of World War II, there was a cultural contrast between the establishment lifestyle—the man in gray flannel, working a corporate job, and the typical nuclear family type and white picket fence. Home and counterculture was the liberal side of the political spectrum. They wore work clothes and dress shirts, hippie clothes, motorcycle jackets. All this became counterculture.
But if you go back further than that, everyone wore tailored suits, from criminals to CEOs to liberals to Republicans. Ralph Lauren couldn’t have built his empire if button-down shirts and penny loafers were exclusively conservative clothing.
I think it’s interesting that the current state of Republican politics is trying to unite the Brooks Brothers aesthetic with gold sneakers. Do you see them coming together?
I think it’s a weird dichotomy right now, because the MAGA movement and Republicans in general have always kind of looked to certain ideas of America. Although not all men wore suits in the 1950s, the suit has historically been associated with a bourgeois type of lifestyle. And a lot of conservatism in general is about supporting bourgeois lifestyles, ethics, identity, politics, etc.
Now there is a populist part of the Republican Party that is not about Reaganism or Bush. This is very much about Trump. And the aesthetic is very different from what William Buckley wore. William Buckley did not wear gold sneakers.
I think they are distinct and opposite, but people can hold conflicting ideas in their minds. We live in an age where politics is very tribal. And as long as it fits the narrative of our tribe, I think it’s cohesive for that group. For Republicans, I think there are two very conflicting aesthetics in the party right now.
Tech men are new to the MAGA crowd, but many have noticed a significant change in their appearance, most notably Mark Zuckerberg. Can you talk about what they want to signal and to whom?
I heard through the grapevine in my industry that [Elon Musk] He used to have a stylist, I don’t think he has a stylist anymore. Mark Zuckerberg denies having a stylist, but I don’t believe him. He’s certainly been undergoing a style change in the past year and three months. Jeff Bezos clearly has a stylist. I don’t think what they do has anything to do with politics. I think Jeff Bezos changed his style after the divorce. And I suspect that Mark Zuckerberg just got tired of dressing up as a college student. Elon has clearly given up on his stylist and doesn’t dress very well.
[Zuckerberg] Dressed more like an MMA guy. She is wearing boxy tees and gold chains. But she looks like someone who updated her look to be more trendy. There are a lot of guys who wear that kind of silhouette and gold chains, and I don’t know if that says anything about their politics.
We saw a lot of “spaghetti western” type of vibe. What do you think about it?
As a fashion trend, the western look is really more liberal now, as it is popular in big cities. Conservatives now dress like metrosexuals in the early 2000s and liberals like Bush-era conservatives. Conservatives are in skinny suits or slim suits and liberals are in Carhartts, western shirts, cowboy boots. Some of this is inherently on the right because it has a Midwestern look.
But like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk often wears cowboy boots.
