Mark Zuckerberg at Prada. Jeff Bezos at Dior Haute Couture. And biohacker Bryan Johnson walking the runway in Paris. Are tech bros really the future of fashion?
Bryan Johnson was wearing pieces of shit. Quite literally. The 48-year-old tech billionaire was tightly strutting at Matières Fécales, the provocative Parisian fashion brand whose name means ‘faecal substance’ last week at Paris Fashion Week. He modelled one of the label’s closing looks – a nice one, with a sleek ribbed top and close-cropped slacks – at their show, which was titled ‘The 1%’ and featured blood-palmed gloves, pearls worn as ball-gags, prosthetic cheekbones and noses that are seemingly made of gelatine, a lot of Patrick Bateman suits with shoulder pads wide enough to hide grenades.
©Matières Fécales
Johnson is the type of tech mogul who once bought Venmo. Today, his claim to fame is trying to live forever, ‘biohacking’ his way into immortality while livestreaming it for a captive audience of immortal beloveds. There’s a Netflix documentary about him where he compulsively measures his own body data against his teen son’s. There’s a post on X where he talks about slipping his hand under his girlfriend-slash-business-partner’s shirt that commenters called ‘50 Shades of Grey Matter.’ There’s a New York Times story that asks, quite bluntly, if his longevity startup is a ‘business or a cult’ due to its ride-or-die ethos. And now there is Mr. Johnson, walking in a Paris Fashion Week show that simultaneously glorifies and icks out on the hyper-rich, hyper-augmented people who loom in untouchable places with silent vowels like Gstaad.
Johnson isn’t the only tech bro billionaire to pop up in a recent front row. Witness Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanches-Bezos attending the Dior Haute Couture show in January as guests of Delphine Arnault, the brand’s chief executive and president (who is also a billionaire). After being announced as Met Gala lead sponsors and honorary co-chairs, rumours began to swirl that the couple would be effectively buying Vogue, a scuttlebutt that got shot down fast by Vogue owners Condé Nast. Still, the idea that the Bezoses could buy Vogue is formidable enough to shake some very stylish trees.
Jeff Bezos with Delphine Arnault (left) and Lauren Sánchez Bezos (right). ©Getty
Much like the Amazon/Vogue rumours, there’s also front-row chatter that Meta is toying with similar media buys. At Milan Fashion Week, Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at Prada sent his own platform into a meltdown. The boy genius turned adult mogul strode into the Prada show space like a ruffled dad at a high school reunion – dressed in clothes that very smart women assured him were great (they were), affably mystified about the whole deal, likely looking forward to getting a drink.
Was this a classic move from Miuccia Prada, the woman who went from Italian communist in college to self-made billionaire and big deal arbiter of taste? The designer certainly likes her clothes conflicted, with pink princess heels coming purposefully scuffed and blue satin party dresses zipping up the front like a finance-bro vest. But for all of Prada’s fashion contradictions, Lauren Sherman, the watchful fashion mistress of the hot startup newsletter Puck, says Prada-Berg was pure business. Sherman broke the news a few days before the show, with sources saying that Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses proved so successful that Prada wants its own upmarket version.
Mark Zuckerberg at Prada. ©Reuters
It makes sense for Zuckerberg too. From a marketing standpoint, he needs new ways to insist that Instagram, which he owns, is still a better fashion play than TikTok and Pinterest, which he doesn’t own.
A decade ago, many fashion insiders might have recoiled at Mark Zuckerberg walking into the coolest runway show in the world or Jess Bezos on the steps of the Met for fashion’s equivalent of the Oscars. It would have been taken as corruption or hypocrisy. Real fashion was art! Self-expression! Otherhood! Not… like… another way to hoard cash.
Today though, with global warfare and climate collapse (and lesser but still upsetting evils like very low-rise jeans) we’re all a little more realistic. Fashion people – like most people – need to pay the bills, and thanks to inflation, tariffs, and increased fuel costs, those bills are mounting. Luxury houses, too, need to invest in the future, and investment takes the type of billionaire capital that these men have built (sigh). Meanwhile, tech companies need to convince us that they know how to be human. And so, you have Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and onetime slob prince of hoodies and flip flops, rocking up to Prada like it’s a coffee meeting and he got the last table at the café.
A moment for the reality check: Fashion is about power, and money is often the surest sign of it. That means fashion has always vaunted wealth. It happened in ancient Rome, when wearing the colour purple was punishable by death unless you were royal. Even when Marie Antoinette was reviled by the public, her outfits were still ravenously catalogued and often copied, even by women who claimed to hate her.
And let’s not pretend there haven’t been other billionaires at fashion month – self-made billionaire Oprah turned up at Chanel, Zimmermann and Chloé; Karlie Kloss (a media mogul and billionaire by marriage) walked the Gucci show, where Nicky Hilton Rothschild sat front row with her sister Paris; Givenchy muse Rooney Mara (of the Rooney and Mara sports dynasties) arrived to support Sarah Burton’s runway effort. Fashion week’s rarest and most coveted runway ticket was to The Row, the deliciously understated brand by Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, which received its own $1 billion valuation in 2024.
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Having wealth isn’t what’s gotten people so riled up. It’s these particular men who are hitting a nerve, likely because they haven’t seemed interested in fashion until they realised – maybe a little too late – that its power needs to be coaxed out like a flame in the damp. You can’t do that with a wad of cash, or a social media post about your goddess girlfriend. At least, you couldn’t. Now… maybe. Probably. And people are thrown.
For example, the day of the Prada show, a friend – an editor at a fashion magazine that isn’t this one, actually – saw my stealth pics of Mr. Zuckerberg on Instagram and sent me the vomit emoji. ‘If you hate him, why are you sending me a message on his app?’ I typed. ‘Nobody’s forcing you to be on here.’
Except that’s a lie. If you want to do anything in fashion, or media in general, you have to be on social media. It’s a free marketing platform, an open telephone book, an eternal inspiration board, and an easy way to learn what jobs are open and where to apply.
We can’t opt out of Mr. Zuckerberg’s world, or Mr. Bezos’s, or even Mr. Johnson’s, the same way we can’t opt out of wearing clothes even if we claim to ‘hate’ fashion. This is all mandatory. This is our modern truth.
And after years of sweatshirts and Adidas slides, Mark Zuckerberg has finally settled into his truth that despite wanting to live through a screen, what you wear on your real, breathing body influences how you act both in person and in the digital world. Miuccia Prada has understood that truth for quite some time and has been steadily building clothes for it without wondering how they might look on an Instagram reel.
No wonder they met up for a cocktail. No wonder we all would secretly have quite liked to join them.