a tech bro, a k-pop idol, and a kardashian walk into a bar...

cool, and other things you can't buy.

content warning: this piece contains pictures of mark zuckerberg.

there is a grotesque roaming the corridors of the white house. or rather, there was a grotesque roaming the corridors of the white house until the grotesque grotesqued so hard, even the circus’ cheeto-colored conductor wished to avert his eyes. built like a meringue and painfully obtuse to the social rules that would make him atleast a little easier to stomach, musk infected the start of trump’s second term with a patheticness astonishing to even the conservatives.

in what was a divorce as expected as kim kardashian ditching her faux liberal shtick the minute it was no longer socially viable, elon musk and donald trump called it quits a few month after successfully hijacking an election together and plummeting american politics further down the toilet. the news cycle has moved on, busy covering faux deaths and epstein files, but i have not.

billionaires have always existed. affluence has always gone hand in hand with silence because reminding the general public that you are fucking them over to make all your money has historically been known to have scary, guillotine-wielding consequences. the oligarchs of old understood that nothing should be allowed to jeopardize the bag, least of all ego. in this culture of personality though, it seems the new class haven’t been able to maintain the aloof mysteriousness of their capitalistic forefathers. musk walks around lifeless because there is nothing interesting for him to say or do. it’s why he relies on ketamine and nazi salutes to keep him going; his lot mistake notoriety for respect. it’s not enough for these billionaire’s to be in possession of more wealth than God himself. no. now they want you to think they’re cool too.

nothing makes that urge more apparent than the sartorial choices these men are making. take mark zuckerberg. obsessed with being viewed as accessible and ‘of the people’, he took a page out of steve jobs’ book in those first years at facebook and stuck to a fashion manual that appeared (atleast on the surface) uncomplicated. fitted grey tees often paired with dad sneakers and zip hoodies that screamed ‘everyman’; the part being played here was one of the accidental billionaire. he could be your classmate, or your neighbor’s slightly odd, endearingly unfashionable boyfriend. don’t worry about the mounting evidence that points him out to be a habitual liar and possible conman. he can't possibly be evil because look, he dresses just like you. have you ever seen a supervillian in jeans?

at some point around 2018 though, the mask starts to fall apart. the man hailed as a once in a lifetime thinker is sat before 42 members of congress answering questions about cambridge analytica, russia, invasion of privacy and election theft- and he looks pathetic. an ill fitted suit hangs off his body. his loose tie resembles a noose; he has come ready to hang himself as repentance for ruining the world. there is no sight of the grey tee he often donned with such smug glee, actively self mythologizing as the inheritor of jobs’ throne, silicon valley’s new king. he knew to wear a suit and look like the establishment because, well. he’s always been one of them.

part of the reluctant ‘charm’ of the early zuckerberg look is the childishness of it, no matter how practiced and purposefully crafted it was. there was an air of rebellion; we aren’t like the grown ups. we’re cool because we don’t wear black and behave like the respectable execs we replaced.

the tech industry does personify petulant unruliness. trying to pass sanctions and limitations on these companies has proven to be nothing short of impossible. the power they hold through lobbying and now in these trumpian times, through unsubtle donations to whoever promises to let them keep killing us all means they are untouchable. they think themselves rebellious because of this, not recognizing that all it proves is that they’re the grown ups they grew up resenting. how rebellious and anti-establishment can you be stood in the white house waiting for a president to be sworn in?

as facebook became meta, darwinian shearling coats and gold chains start to work their way into the zuck’s closet. it is more common to see him now in some absurd over sized hypebeast shirt complete with a tacky, self-aggrandizing slogan like carthago delenda est (carthage must be destroyed) greasy headtop garnished with unruly ‘curls’ resembling unkempt public hair.

many have written essays trying to pinpoint when exactly the tech oligarchs became so committed to being villains. i think it happened on that floor, the second or third time a member of congress called zuckerberg a liar in front of the world. his humiliation ritual soothed our souls; it also bred a contempt within him and his peers that we are all still paying the price for. years of myth building crumbled like feta under the slightest bit of pressure as he was revealed to be not some closeted, aloof genius but a petulant, selfish man so eager to be viewed as valuable, he’d rather burn the world to the ground than accept that he’s an odd little freak who scares us, just as he scared away the girls in college classes.

he wears supreme now as a fuck you to his critics and looks like heated garbage as he does so. it’s cringey and insincere, perhaps more insincere than even that first forced uniform he ripped off. at least his emulation of jobs came from a fascination with the man. the reason he missed the mark is the same reason none of zuck’s peers will ever be able to put together a genuinely interesting fit- jobs actually liked what he was wearing, and what he liked had sauce.

the black issey turtle neck, the round glasses and new balance 992: all of this was hand selected by the apple CEO specifically because they fit his tastes (there are even rumours that he had a direct hand in designing the 992 alongside his friend jim davis. it has been confirmed that he approved the final sketch for the trainer). there was no performance being crafted. jobs didn’t need to assign lore to his choices. the meaning came first. zuckerberg’s entire career has been the reverse; he creates something and then starts flailing about for a respectable reason to sell us on it. the site he built to bitch about his female classmates was re-branded as a ‘community site’ made to ‘connect’ people. he has no taste, so he adopts the language of those who do and colonizes it for himself like every pathetic wannabe before him: he turned to streetwear.

fashion starts in the streets. in fact, anything worthwhile starts in the streets because creativity is borne from limitation. ngugi wa thiango called it poor theory, this link between experimentation as a means to survive and cultural innovation.

it’s our mothers lining their lips and painting on faux freckles and beauty marks with the same eye pencil years before white girls on instagram even knew how to pronounce the word ombre. dapper dan screenprinting the gucci, fendi, LV monograms on to premium leathers in harlem and drag queens baking their faces to help their makeup withstand the pressure and heat of performance. it is innovation borne from necessity. as we go into the workplace or to college, we take these little innovations with us and share them unwittingly. one glance at your stacked rings and already that girl sat across from you is adding to her en route cart.

it’s the kim kardashian disease. she is, to me, pathetic in a way that’s comical. we have watched her try to inject her way to relevancy, for years preying on the insecurities of little girls everywhere to make her fortune. aware of her diminishing social stock, she hired rihanna’s former stylist in a bid to gain some of those fashion girl points back. like a vulture, she pulls out her cheque book and feasts on the cultural currency of the deceased: princess diana’s diamond attallah cross, michael jackson’s velvet jacket, elizabeth taylor’s jade lorraine schwartz bracelets, jacqueline kennedy’s cartier tank have all fallen victim to the kardashian’s vast appetite for relevancy.

polonius- the greasy sycophant in hamlet’s court- says at one point in the play a line that has always struck me

to thine own self be true

there is grief in that moment because we as an audience have watched him abandon himself over and over in the hopes of courting favor in claudius’ court. he sees his children and knows they need to be his counter entirely to live anything resembling a valuable life. you wonder absently if it is advice he wishes he’d heard at their age. it begs the question: what does kim kardashian say to her children? isn’t it exhausting constantly trying to play a part you aren’t interesting or convincing enough to pull off?

think of the best dressers you know. my mother taught me all i know about building a closet that reflects me. she pairs sun yellow and raspberry pink and it makes sense because she believes the story of that outfit. it works because she worked hard to pay for the abaaya that swirls about her ankles. she hunted and bargained for the gold bangles that chime every time she steps forward to greet someone.

fashion is a language. it is meant to express our internal weather. look at the blackpink girls. tell me from their red carpet looks who they are, or what they believe. in fact look at almost any k-pop idol and describe their temperament in three words based on nothing but their outfits. not their assigned temperament; do not rattle off concept names and world-building tropes. who are they? so controlled is their styling, you wonder what they’d look like in their own clothes. k-pop understands the power of visual storytelling. it’s why whenever they want to sell us a hip hop concept full of rebellion, they’ll put them in durags and chains. it’s the lisa thing; when she wants to be perceived as a respectable pop princess in the west, she is pale and elegant like in her Born Again music video. it is only when lisa needs a little bit of edge that she whips out the grills and self-tanner. all her songs brag about how cool she is while never offering up a morsel of creative sincerity. how cool are you really when your entire image as an artist is made up of the iconography of other people?

there are, of course, exceptions: yeonjun choi of tomorrow by together is truly an androgynous delight. long, romantic skirts paired with skull crusher military boots or cashmere sweaters speak to an unpredictability and self-assuredness you can see in even his music. on red carpets there’s a silent petulance in his eyes, daring you to tell him his choices are inappropriate. in a country where conservatism is brewed into even the entertainment industry (much, in all honesty, like Hollywood), a male idol modelling for a miu miu femininities campaign and repeatedly dispelling the myth that masculinity is the only synonym for power is worth something, especially when it tracks with his own styling choices. i believe him because he believes in the clothes he’s wearing.

this is the difference between fashion and style: sincerity. cool cannot be inherited or purchased. just ask drake; much like kimberly, he’s been trying to for the better part of three decades. with all the people cited in this piece, there is a common thread- an unmooredness that prevents authenticity. there is no belief system, and thus there is no self to represent. you must then inherit clothes and aesthetics just as you inherit ‘politics’; kim was a democrat until america revealed herself to be a trumpian nightmare once more. drake is for someone –a megan thee stallion fan, a friend to the weeknd- only so far as it suits him. the tech bros will go wherever they’ll be accepted, foaming at the mouth to be part of the cool kids table like the social outcasts they are.

nobody will ever look better in grills than the black boys i grew up crushing on. khol will never cling to the waterlines of the visiting beauty voyeurs who hop onto cultural heritage like cheap bandwagons. there is something satisfying in knowing that their hearts will never be content. their pockets will keep bleeding in the hopes of attaining the one thing they cannot buy.