In Silicon Valley, you can wear whatever you want on your feet if you’re a billionaire. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has frequently appeared in public wearing a hoodie and Adidas slip-on sandals. The Power of the Hoodie-Wearing
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is open about wearing barefoot-inspired Vibram FiveFingers athletic shoes.
Tom Searcy, a consultant, once wrote, “I have a number of super-successful Silicon Valley clients.
who dress in tattered denim, Vans shoes, Ahegao hoodies, and T-shirts.” “Dressing like a homeless person to attend board meetings is a status signal.”The Power of the Hoodie-Wearing
Guideline
Anecdotal evidence and the sporadic study imply.
that high-status citizens feel free to breach rules—by eating with their mouths open and breaking traffic laws.
and voicing controversial opinions—while people generally conform to social norms out of fear of rejection or rebuke.
But how do other people perceive nonconformity? Do we consider it to be a status symbol?
ROLE
along with Francesca Gino and Anat Keinan, two professors there.
Even after adjusting for age and gender, they discovered that academics. who dressed FASHION casually, forgoing jackets in favor of T-shirts, had better research records. Then, assuming that’s what it is, they looked into why and when this sartorial strategy for announcing status is successful.
When Bellezza visited Milan, she asked certain employees of upscale stores (Armani, Valentino, etc.) to picture a woman walking into the establishment in either workout attire or a fur coat. Then, the clerks assessed her probable financial and celebrity standing. The hypothetical shoppers evaluated the more casually dressed individuals to be wealthier and more significant. Wealthy people occasionally dress very poorly to project superiority, according to one employee, who also claimed that “if you dare enter these boutiques so underdressed, you are absolutely going to buy anything.”