So, I just read the short piece by Matthew Iglesias about the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr: Yahoo Buys Tumblr, Promises Continued Operational Independence Under David Karp’s Leadership. Concise, makes sense. Here are the two key sentences:
You’re going to hear a lot about Marissa Mayer trying to make Yahoo cool again and no doubt that plays some role in her mind. But the basics here are that Yahoo is a company that has a lot of cash on hand but needs growth, and Tumblr has a lot of web traffic but needs some cash. It’s a nice coincidence of wants and needs.
But, I was really struck by the accompanying picture. Take a look:
Photo by Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images
A few years ago, I read a most terrific essay by Tom Wolfe in his collection Hooking Up: Two Young Men Who Went West. (profiles of Robert Noyce and William Shockley). One reviewer wrote this about this essay:
Wolfe’s essay “Two Young Men Who Went West,” the finest short history of the early Silicon Valley ever written…
I thought of the essay as I looked at the photo. From Wolfe (sorry – no link, this is typed from my physical copy):
There were no rules of dress at all, except for some unwritten ones. Dress should be modest, modest in the social as well as the moral sense. At Fairchild there were no hard-worsted double-breasted pinstripe suits and shepherd’s-check neckties. Sharp, elegant, fashionable, or alluring dress was a social blunder. Shabbiness was not a sin. Ostentation was.
So now, here is Marissa Mayer near the moment of one of her most visible decisions, dressing “down.” (Yes, I am aware that Marissa Mayer frequently dresses “up.” (See this article: Is Marissa Mayer The New Face Of Workplace Fashion? And this one: These Are Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s Favorite Designer Labels). But in this photo, which she surely know would make the rounds, she dresses notably not “up.”
What does this mean? I’m not sure. Maybe simply this – the only thing that matters is product. And, in this case, finding the cash to keep going, and, on the other hand, finding/attracting the eyeballs to keep bringing in more cash.
And, maybe simply this – you always dress for the audience in front of your face.
First Friday Book Synopsis 
So, how does this work with the late Steve Jobs who at the middle of his career identified a look, casual jeans and black turtle neck, had a top designer produce a hundred copies, then wore those no matter where he was – up, down, middle for the rest of his career?
This was before his earlier dress of “shabby chic” which was often robes.
Just wondering.
A few rambling response thoughts…
The quote from Tom Wolfe’s essay, included in the post, is worth pondering. It appears to me that the Tech/Silicon Valley world is much more casual than the East Coast Financial World, which is all suits and ties.
(And here’s a comparison/contrast — take a look at the dress decisions on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC nightly show, compared to other shows on that, and other, news outlets).
I remember reading (I think in The Big Short by Michael Lewis – but I’m not certain that was the source) that the really rich folks dressed in casual attire, but the people trying to do business with them/for them were dressed in more traditional business attire.
So — re. Steve Jobs. He could do what he wanted — and if you watch videos of Apple “roll out” events, all of his participants dressed “down,” though only Steve Jobs himself wore the “Steve Jobs uniform.” The Steve Jobs uniform is explained at: Steve Jobs Finally Explains His Uniform