Zuckerberg, his suits, and his hearings on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON: Only one of the over 60 US lawmakers who questioned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over two days about his company’s slack privacy practices remarked on his looks — his hair used to be curly when they last met years ago, he offered — but no one had anything to say about his suits, shirts or ties.
Zuckerberg’s outfit was a big part of the conversation that preceded his first visit to Capitol Hill and has continued since he left for Silicon Valley, where he is presumably back to his preferred jeans, gray t-shirt and sneakers.
The verdict — the suits were large and ill-fitting. GQ urged readers to think of them as “a sartorial dog collar: hiked up around his ears”.
The shirts were a size or two larger as well, and the ties looked as if they were pre-knotted and slipped over his head just before he walked into the hall.
The New York Times called it Zuckerberg’s “I’m sorry suit” in reference to his mission — to apologise for allowing Londonbased political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to use inappropriately harvested personal data of Facebook users, including his own. And for being slow to respond to Russian manipulation of his website he founded and continues to run.
And the hair? It was “cut so close that it was more like penitence than grooming”, according to The Washington Post.
Thirty-three-year-old Zuckerberg is a carefree dresser or a consciously careful one, depending on which side you are of the #DeleteFacebook divide.
He has said he prefers the same gray t-shirt, or a hoodie of any other colour, and jeans every day because he doesn’t think it’s worth his while to spend time choosing a different one every morning.
Zuckerberg switches to suits when he wants to, and some times, forces everyone else to fall in line as well.
The day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected at the Facebook headquarters in September 2015, a directive went out mandating a dress code for everyone planning to attend.
Modi, an occasion-conscious dresser, also showed up in a semiformal suit — dark pants, white shirt and a dark waist coat. But no tie — the prime minister hasn’t been seen in one in decades.
But Zuckerberg wore one, as he had for his meetings with former President Barack Obama and a state dinner at the White House — and Pope Francis in the past, and now the congressional hearings.