From Elizabeth Holmes aìto Emily Weiss, the style evolution of female CEOs The iconic black turtleneck has been replaced by Bottega Veneta heels, bearing witness to a deep and aesthetic change
Among the countless elements that make The Dropout one of the best series of the year, the ability to deeply and precisely portray the feelings and evolution of the main character through the clothes stands out. In the Hulu series created by Elizabeth Meriwether, Amanda Seyfried plays the role of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the start-up Theranos - at one point valued at $9 billion, - which promised accurate blood tests by taking a single drop, thanks to an innovative technology that never actually worked. In the tale of the rise and fall of this young Stanford dropout, who today awaits her sentence after being convicted of conspiracy and fraud, the clothes she wears play a primary role.
The belief that if you want to make it in the business world, crowded with men, you have to dress like them, or at least choose simple, monochromatic clothes that don't stand out too much, almost as if you don't want to over-emphasize your presence in a room you shouldn't be in, is slowly changing, with virtuous examples coming from the beauty and fashion industries in particular. Emily Weiss, founder, and CEO of the blog Into The Gloss and of the brand Glossier, for example, has made her personal style a further element in the construction of an aesthetic reality even before designing a product. Her fashionable dressing, featuring the latest It shoes and the next-big-thing-designer, sitting in the front row of fashion shows, has helped to shape the ideal of a trendy yet smart girlboss, turning Weiss into a reference point, an inspiration, for all those girls who would later become Glossier's target audience.
Formal outfits but in bright colors like yellow and lilac, wrap dresses in colorful prints, skinny jeans, and heels. Whitney Wolfe Herd has not only changed the world of dating apps, working first as vice president of marketing for Tinder and later founding Bumble but bringing to the world of tech a cheerful, fun, formal wardrobe. As if to say that women entrepreneurs are serious even without wearing a dark suit, or that they can celebrate the IPO of a company holding their 18-month-old son, as she did, who, among other things, is the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
This whole analysis is clearly also the result of inequality because the same article could not be written focusing on male CEOs. Not only because, apart from rare exceptions, it would be boring and repetitive, but because it would make clear how men's style choices are less important, symbolic, and analyzed than those of their female colleagues, for whom even a simple shirt can send a very precise message. But it's also by taking with them a normal, varied, real wardrobe, different from the business aesthetics we are used to, that female professionals make room for themselves in the business world, trying, gradually, to smooth gender differences.
