With the “You Can See Everything” now out in theaters, the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is back in the spotlight nearly four years after she was sentenced to 11 years and three months in federal prison for defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.
With her low voice, long blonde hair, signature black turtleneck and all-black ensembles, the Stanford University dropout stood out in the male-dominated tech sector.
At its peak, Theranos was valued at $9 billion and counted Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and George Shultz among its board members, according to Forbes.
Was she emulating Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose signature look paired an Issey Miyake black turtleneck with Levi’s 501 jeans and gray New Balance sneakers?
In a 2015 interview with Glamour magazine, Holmes said that wearing the same thing every day gave her one less thing to think about. Estimating that she owned 150 black turtlenecks, she told the magazine that she started wearing turtlenecks at the age of eight. “All of my focus is on my work. I take it so seriously. I’m sure that translates into how I dress,” Holmes said.
Holmes’ account of her simple style was later challenged by former Theranos staffer Ana Arriola, who recalled how Holmes was once partial to “baggy Christmas sweaters” in a 2019 Elle interview. Arriola, who had previously worked at Apple, said Holmes was “infatuated” with Jobs’ uniform and asked about achieving a similar effect. Holmes eventually settled on a black turtleneck, black pants and black shoes as her unofficial work uniform at Theranos.
Holmes was “absolutely influenced by Steve Jobs and his habit of dressing the same way every day,” according to Lorynn Divita, an associate professor of apparel merchandising at Baylor University. “There were plenty of other choices for women. She deliberately chose a black turtleneck to get the halo effect of Steve Jobs.”
Holmes engaged in “reverse ostentation, a practice where people, who can afford to buy anything, deliberately dress very plainly,” Divita said. “They are conveying to us that they are so important and their time is so valuable that they can’t waste time or energy trying to figure out what to wear like the rest of us do.”
By not wearing designer labels, trendy styles or clothes that attract the male gaze, Holmes was relaying that she was “too important and too serious to care about fashion,” Divita said.
Just as Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg once favored hoodies, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates opted for khakis with a blue Oxford shirt, many tech executives dress down
to try to convey that they are “just ordinary people,” Divita said. Such casualness also signals that they don’t need to impress anyone, she added.
By essentially copying Jobs’ style, Holmes gave herself “an aura of intelligence and success as an entrepreneur,” according to Heather Akou, the author of “On the Job: A History of American Work Uniforms.” According to NPR, Jobs even tried to get Apple executives to wear a similar ensemble as a uniform — Issey Miyake-designed vests. “But they refused to go along with his plans,” Akou said of the attempt to make a uniform the norm for his company.
Far from the first to use a black turtleneck as a fashion statement, other cultural tastemakers like pop artist Andy Warhol, musician Bob Dylan, the actress Jayne Mansfield, and Audrey Hepburn took to them too. Amanda Seyfried sports a black turtleneck portraying Holmes in the Hulu series “The Dropout,” and appears in Fielder and Oppenheim’s new documentary.
Gender may have come into play with Holmes’ preference, due to the heavily male-dominated STEM sector, according to Akou, who is also a professor of fashion studies at Indiana University. Noting how Holmes did not mimic a woman executive’s style or try to feminize Jobs’ look, Akou said, “My interpretation is that she was either anxious about being a woman in a male dominated profession or wanted to convey that ‘gender doesn’t matter’ for a tech entrepreneur.”
Steven Faerm, a professor of fashion at Parsons School of Design, offered another take. Echoing Jobs’ minimalist uniform “evoked innovation, intellectual authority and almost singular devotion to one’s mission,” he said. “A simple, repeated ‘uniform’ can also minimize visual distractions, directing an audience’s attention toward the wearer’s words and ideas,” Faerm said.