In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg explains that Facebook is like fashion—but he could be talking about The Social Network itself. Deep down, it’s “a fashion flick,” writes Rebecca Dana for the Daily Beast. Sure, Zuck’s entire wardrobe appears to consist of sweatpants, hoodies, and Adidas sandals, but “just as Oliver Stone did with the sharkskin-suited bankers of Wall Street,” she writes, “director David Fincher and his team have given us a new sartorial standard for success in the Internet age. And that standard is: dumpy.”
Wall Street defined the opulence of a different era; The Social Network, says the film's costume director, defines “the new banker”—tech geeks for whom "making it" means being allowed to not give a damn about how you're dressed. Writes Dana, "Are you smart and ambitious enough that you can waltz into a meeting with a top venture capital firm in your pajamas and still come away with a fat check? Do you care so little about how you look that you’ll wear the same sweats for a few days running?” Zuckerberg is, and that makes him our newest fashion icon. (More Mark Zuckerberg stories.)