At the end of men’s fashion week in Paris, I deleted the Gmail app on my phone, stopped checking Instagram every three seconds and went on vacation. And so, I was largely offline for what I consider to be one of the most consequential clothing-related events of the year.
Not Paris couture week (though, do catch up on all of Vanessa Friedman’s coverage here) but the Sun Valley Conference last week. The early summer confab of moguls, A.I. execs and founders of nascent start-ups with the market caps of modest island nations always provides a telling snapshot of how the affluent and powerful dress at that particular moment.
Some corporate chiefs descend on rural Idaho in pretty much the same thing each year. The venture capitalist Aviv Nevo, whom I always mistake for Sting at first glance, was there again in one of his stock black Rick Owens jackets. Alex Karp, the Palantir chief executive, wore another T-shirt with as many chest logos as a Tour de France kit.
If you’re searching for some takeaway about how rich men dress these days, look at their sleeves. From Jeff Bezos down, the short-sleeved T-shirts and polos a lot of attendees wear are as tight around the upper arm as a blood pressure cuff. At certain angles Sun Valley seems to exist just so billionaires can eyeball who has the biggest biceps. Sun Valley has become gun valley.
Beyond the taut fit, their clothes are otherwise unremarkable. Could anyone tell the difference between the dark tees worn by John Ternus, the incoming Apple chief executive; Brian Armstrong, the Coinbase chief executive; and Brian Grazer? No.
The billionaire body competition has simmered for years but was turbocharged by Bezos in his post-Amazon boss life, as he contorted himself into a buffed-up Mr. Clean. Sun Valley makes visible all of the chatter about the corporate world’s obsession with longevity and corporeal optimization.
Still, I’m more in it for the attendees who demonstrate some interest in spending their staggering net worth on clothes, who treat the conference as the perfect place to try out a look. The Warner Bros. Discovery pooh-bah David Zaslav must have gotten some nice feedback on his mogul-goes-West trucker jacket look from two years ago because he tried it again, swapping his corduroy Brunello Cucinelli jacket for a traditional blue denim version from Polo. He skipped the Butch Cassidy-style neck bandanna this time around. Smart, that.
And I am almost loath to mention Mark Zuckerberg and his Loewe shorts, the most obvious piece of high fashion to surface at Sun Valley this year. Zuckerberg, who not long ago sat at a Prada show, seems so desperate to be taken seriously as a guy who enjoys fashion, who gets it. At Sun Valley, though, he looked like a Miami crypto bro who got lost on his way to his Jet Ski.
That’s the thing about Sun Valley: Tread too fashionable, and you’ll ruffle the summer camp vibe. That’s what I thought when I saw photos of Josh Kushner and Karlie Kloss. He was in a dark blue Prada shirt, the collar inexplicably popped; she was in a cornflower blue tee with a $300 Jeanerica men’s plaid shirt overtop (now sold out). They looked good. They are also conventionally attractive people, and one of them has made a career out of making clothes look good. Still, against the Sun Valley backdrop, they really looked more suited for a catalog shoot than a discussion on A.I. integration.
Yet there was one guy who stood out in the right way. Ivan Zhao — I admit I hadn’t heard of him until I saw his photo — is a founder of Notion, a productivity start-up worth about $10 billion. (Guess I should know him …) He was the rare attendee to hazard a suit: a slate gray three-piece with a puckery texture that looked to me like Armani. He wore it with a white tee and round Bond villain glasses. He looked excellent. He was a founder whose outfit was actually worth emulating.
Other things worth knowing about:
Erling Haaland, the Norwegian footballer who captivated casual fans with his quirky man-discovers-America antics and capacious bags during his team’s respectable World Cup run, returned to his home country yesterday. In addition to an exotic-skin Dolce & Gabbana tote the size of an XXXL pizza box, Haaland was carting a real only-from-America keepsake: a taxidermy raccoon. Perhaps Loewe should take note.
