Last week a seemingly simple question was asked Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of President Donald Trump, about the White House clothing code.
A person from the press said that government officials were “annoying” because the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, had not used a suit to go to the oval office. However, this person continued, “Elon Musk never has a suit there. So what is the clothing code?
As usually happens with everything in Washington, it was actually a matter of power.
Musk exercises his informing informally where everyone else must formally dress. He wears his “technical support” shirt for the city and at meetings with the president.
Therefore, when the technology of the technology put a suit and tie twice last week, like any common worker in Washington, it was seen as a sign that perhaps some of the old rules of this place – and those related to fashion and the label are among the oldest ones – suddenly they were already applying to this special government employee.
Interestingly, when Musk puts on a good suit, it gives the impression of having lost status.
There is no doubt that he and Trump are still together on this trip – the president even published on Tuesday on social networks that he was going to buy a Tesla – but last week things began to change a little for Musk. The cabinet secretaries began to face it. Trump said he would have to use a “scalpel” instead of an “ax” to make the cuts in the government. The republican legislators of the Capitol began to worry about him.
Leavitt said in his informative session that when Musk put a suit for the president’s speech before Congress, “I think he liked it a lot.” He put on two days later for the second cabinet meeting. (In the first one he had put on the “Technical Support” shirt and joked about how he was dressed).
For Donald Trump, the costumes are no small thing. His father, a real estate promoter, used one every day, even when he was going to visit the works. His son ended up doing the same. And now his three children (even the teenager) prefer the costumes, and the ties are knotted in the same way as his father.
Musk is fundamentally a creature of Silicon Valley, a scenario that began a revolution in the way of dressing power. The young masters of that universe dressed informally to demonstrate that they belonged to a new elite, one that refused to dress as the adults who were about to overthrow. The shirt defeated the suit.
However, Washington is still the only city, more than any other, in which people continue to wear a suit and tie. That is why it is curious to see Musk in a suit. Ultimately, he is wearing himself as the same thing that came to destroy: the gray suit bureaucrat.
“Maybe he felt badly dressed,” said Roger Stone, a former Trump ally whose conviction for seven crimes was switched by the president in 2020.
Stone, an outstanding lover of clothing, published a book with his life lessons Stone’s Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style (“Stone rules: how to win in politics, business and style”). One of its rules affirms that “if you dedicate yourself to any business or profession, it is much more likely to succeed if you go well dressed than if you are going badly dressed.”
Stone commented that he liked to see Musk well dressed. “It seemed to me that he looked great,” he said. “But I doubt we will see him using one every day. It is not his style. ”
Stone suspects that Musk’s style bothers the president? “I can’t speculate on that,” he objected.
He has always seemed difficult to believe that, among all people, Trump seemed good that Musk dressed as he does.
The president is almost never seen without Brioni and tie (unless he is in one of his golf courses). During his first term, he shouted his original press secretary, Sean Spicer, due to his suit choice.
Trump once had his own line of costumes (sale in Macy’s) and wrote in one of his books that “the way we dress says a lot about us before we say a word.”
“For me, dressing successfully means understanding your environment: knowing the culture and making an effort to reflect and respect it.”
So how is it that the same man who wrote that can allow his most empowered attached to see as a shopping center emo in the place of dressing for the most important work in the world?
Last month there was a rare time when Trump seemed a bit annoying for Musk’s style, when the two men sat next to each other for an interview in Fox News.
Each one wore their respective uniform: a suit and a shirt.
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“They have very bright people working for him,” Trump said in Musk’s defense. And yet, these very bright people fix them to “dress much worse than him, in fact.”
“One would not realize that they have an intellectual coefficient of 180,” added the president.