Mark Zuckerberg’s luxe looks reveal tech oligarch fashion strategy

The Social Reckoning shows a “post-hoodie” Zuckerberg, in Lyall’s words. The film is set between 2019 and 2021, when Facebook faced a whistleblower and Congress, and its Zuckerberg wears restrained suits or near-identical long-sleeved shirts that match his cool, controlled manner on screen.

That’s a sharp turn from the first Sorkin film. In 2010, The Social Network fixed the picture of a young founder in rumpled hoodies and T-shirts, thumbing his nose at corporate dress. The sequel’s Zuckerberg has stopped rebelling against formality.

The film itself follows whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, as she tries to expose internal Facebook documents. Jeremy Allen White also stars. Sorkin wrote and directed it this time; David Fincher directed the 2010 original.

Strong, known for method acting, treated the wardrobe as the first step of the role. Lyall, who also worked with him on Sorkin’s Molly’s Game and The Trial of the Chicago 7, says he contacted her before she could contact him and knew precisely which outfits Zuckerberg wore where.

The shoes were a 2018 Nike Flyknit trainer in black anthracite, which Lyall tracked down on Grailed, a resale site for used designer clothing. The knitwear was harder. The team didn’t want Brunello Cucinelli’s current range; they wanted pieces from five or six years back. Lyall credits Strong with reaching the Italian luxury label, which helped them find the older items.

Lyall joked that the pair spent so long discussing details such as shoelace color that Strong could always join her department if acting dried up. Strong, for his part, had already emailed Zuckerberg before filming to say he was taking the role seriously. Zuckerberg replied, though Strong hasn’t shared what he said, and the two have never met.

Lyall has studied how tech billionaires dress for years. Her earlier credit, the 2025 Jesse Armstrong film Mountainhead about four scheming plutocrats, drew partly on figures such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Many of them, she noticed, wear a lot of Brunello Cucinelli, a brand that sells ribbed sweaters for $4,600 and cashmere cardigans for $16,500.

Her theory is that the label works as a “safety net.” If you’re unsure about what you’re wearing, paying a fortune for it makes you feel better about it, she said, calling it “a security blanket” and an affirmation of your own success.

That’s a long way from 2014, when Zuckerberg said he wasn’t “a cool person” and wore the same gray T-shirts so he could make as few decisions as possible. By the period the film covers, Lyall believes he was trying to seem relatable while picking up on Silicon Valley’s fixation on taste and price. He was also fitter, and in her reading he knew a clingy, expensive sweater showed it off. Her verdict: newly rich, but not gaudy.

Lyall thinks something has changed since then. Tech billionaires, she says, have found a new way to show off, and “it’s not quiet luxury. It’s loud.”

Zuckerberg’s own change came quickly, around 2024: chunky gold chains, Loewe shorts and Alexander McQueen suits decorated with dragonflies. When he began wearing a large gold pendant over his T-shirt, many people online assumed he was copying hip-hop style. Asked about it in an interview, he said it carries a Jewish prayer he sings to his children each night at bedtime.

He has leaned further into fashion this year. Meta has hired stars such as Kylie Jenner to sell its smart glasses, and Zuckerberg has turned up at Prada shows and the Met Gala. In a September newspaper interview devoted entirely to clothes, he said he buys nearly all his wardrobe himself through Instagram, often from newer labels rather than old-money ones. One favorite is Mike Amiri, whose T-shirts cost around $400 and who made him custom pieces, including a shirt reading “Building is my love language” that he wore on stage to present Meta’s Muse AI agent.

Clothes may sound trivial next to privacy fights and AI, but they do real work for a CEO. Fashion writers argue that the new style lets Zuckerberg look like someone other than the man seen sweating through a suit in front of Congress, and gives interviewers a soft, harmless subject to raise instead of his products.

For ordinary users, that’s worth keeping in mind. When a tech leader’s outfit is the headline, the questions about how their apps handle your data, your kids and your feed are not. A pendant with a bedtime prayer is a warm story. It is also, intended or not, a very effective piece of image building.

The film playing out this history didn’t land with audiences. The Social Reckoning opened in theaters on October 9 and took an estimated $5.5 million from 2,606 North American theaters in its first weekend, against a reported production cost of around $30 million. Critics’ reviews were mixed to negative, and audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore. The Social Network, by comparison, opened to more than $22 million and grossed over $224 million worldwide.