What Elon Musk wore to the White House foreshadowed his downfall

In case you neglected it, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have fallen out.

For some – and specifically any individual having a look on the tech billionaire’s White House cloth wardrobe – this will likely come as little wonder. Long earlier than any individual hit ship on the ones inflammatory tweets, or tensions spilled out over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), Musk’s political downfall used to be written within the sewing.

During his time within the White House, Musk refrained from the sartorial rulebook of somebody on the shoulder of a president, the place fits and ties are the average code. He wore darkish Maga baseball caps on the Oval Office and informed a rally in New York: “I’m not just Maga, I’m dark gothic Maga.” Then there have been the T-shirts with slogans corresponding to “Occupy Mars”, “Tech Support” and “Dogefather”. At marketing campaign rallies, commentators famous he seemed “more like he belonged at a Magic: The Gathering tournament than a political event”, his get dressed sense the way an identical of the k-holes that it’s claimed Musk regularly disappeared into.

The extra informal types of Musk and his Silicon Valley tech bros – the place stiff collars are eschewed in favour or crewnecks, adapted jackets softly driven out the door by means of padded gilets – are gentle years clear of the ones of the suited-and-booted US Capitol.

But if Musk’s clobber signalled a brand new DC energy shift, it additionally spoke to other norms. “Disruption might be a badge of honour in the tech space,” says DC-based symbol trainer and magnificence strategist Lauren A Rothman, “but in politics, chaos has a much shorter runway. The White House has been around for a long time. We’re not going to stop wearing suits … This is the uniform.”

All of this dressing down, dressing objectively badly and dressing “inappropriately” has shape. Consider, if you’ll be able to endure to, the case of Dominic Cummings. The former Boris Johnson aide subjected Westminster to dishevelment, Joules gilets, beanies, Billabong T-shirts and tote baggage promoting the 1983 gothic-inspired horror novel The Woman in Black. He wasn’t only a Tory, he used to be a gothic horror Tory.

As Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian columnist and host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast, notes: “Dressing down is usually a power move in politics, just as it is in the boardroom: only the most powerful can get away with it.” That used to be, he says, the message Cummings despatched “when he roamed Number 10 in a gilet: ‘You lot are worker bees who have to wear a uniform, whereas I’m so indispensable to the man at the top, I can wear what I like’.”

It used to be the similar with Musk, whose threads had been a flipped chicken to all the ones Oval Office stiffs in fits. As Rothman places it: “His uniform of casual defiance stands in sharp contrast to that traditionally suited corridor of political power.” And that distinction screams out his other, particular standing.

Before him, there used to be “Sloppy Steve” Bannon, a person by no means knowingly under-shirted. On this facet of the Atlantic, Freedland issues to former David Cameron adviser Steve Hilton and his penchant for turning as much as conferences barefoot: “ditching the shoes was an instant way of signalling his membership of the inner circle”.

It’s that age-old query: who has the privilege to be scruffy? As Freedland places it: “Musk was happy to stand next to the Resolute desk of the president looking like he was dressed for a gamers’ convention. That was his way of reminding everyone of his superior wealth and unique status, outside conventional politics.”

But what Cummings and Musk proportion in sartorial dysfunction, in addition they proportion in political trajectories. Scruffy Icaruses who flew too with reference to the solar; their garments a foreshadowing in their fall. Trump may discuss draining the swamp, however his Brioni fits are very a lot swamp-coded – plus, whilst Johnson may have had strategically unruly hair and ill-fitting fits as crumpled as a chip wrapper, fits they nonetheless had been.

Ultimately, no one likes a bragger. Because dressing in some way during which your privilege is omnipresent if no longer outright mentioned, is a surefire option to piss folks off. Not least Trump, who famous that Musk had “some very brilliant young people working for him that dress much worse than him, actually”, in an interview on Fox in February.

“The contrast between Musk’s garb and Trump’s cabinet,” in step with Freedland, “made them look and seem inferior: servants of the president rather than his equal. It was one more reason why more than a few in Trumpworld are glad to see the (poorly tailored) back of Elon Musk.”

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