Since the dawn of the 20-something dot-com millionaire, the inherent “I’m-not-dressing-to-impress-you”-ness of tech fashion has been one of its identifying characteristics. Who can forget that infamous scene in The Social Network when Jesse Eisenberg shows up to a meeting in pajama pants, a hoodie, and adidas pool slides?
In a 2007 article, Gawker jeered that “nearly every news item about the 23-year-old fratrepreneur mentions (among other signs of youth) the black-and-white sandals, which Mark wears with every outfit.” The blog pegged the story to the fact that, at the time, adidas was discontinuing the shoe.
Flash forward to 2014, when the pool slide has cropped up everywhere from adidas’ own campaign images to W magazine editorials to Rita Ora’s feet. It’s proof of something that’s been in the works for a while: techie fashion is becoming fashion fashion.
As a data analyst by day, this is as exciting to me as it is confusing. That fabled day-to-night outfit that I can wear to work in the afternoon and a Bushwick loft party later on might actually start to exist (and will probably even be comfortable enough to sleep in).
On a recent weekday at the Strata + Hadoop World conference, mesmerized by the identical dad polo shirts in front of me while waiting for my Python tutorial to start, I decided to compile a trend report. Some background: Strata + Hadoop World, held at New York’s Javitz Center, is the Paris Fashion Week of Big Data. Attendees travel from San Francisco, Austin, Hong Kong, Seoul, and even Paris to attend, trips almost entirely paid for (at a price tag of $2,100) by their companies. These people were smart and were there to learn. True to nerd form, 99 percent of them did not give a fuck about their clothes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from a statistics-based analysis of these clothes.
As you can see in the above graph, polos were ultra-popular. The types of people wearing the polos made me think that perhaps they were serving a sort of middle ground: nicer than a T-shirt but chiller than a button-down. Unfortunately, most looked pretty shlubby. I’d say 90 percent of polos had a white crewneck undershirt peeking out, so when trying to recreate this look, don’t forget that Hanes. Turns out, techies are just like us: they also have an “It” bag, but instead of Marques’Almeida pink sheepskin, they’re all rocking SwissGear backpacks.
Something else that really stuck out (or didn’t, as it were): hoodies are O-V-E-R. Is it because everyone who wore hoodies as a class of ‘07 college grad is now trying to settle down, and the ladies of SF prefer Patagonia? Or, is it part of a larger statement the tech community is making about hoodies (like adidas slides) being appr
In a 2007 article, Gawker jeered that “nearly every news item about the 23-year-old fratrepreneur mentions (among other signs of youth) the black-and-white sandals, which Mark wears with every outfit.” The blog pegged the story to the fact that, at the time, adidas was discontinuing the shoe.
Flash forward to 2014, when the pool slide has cropped up everywhere from adidas’ own campaign images to W magazine editorials to Rita Ora’s feet. It’s proof of something that’s been in the works for a while: techie fashion is becoming fashion fashion.
As a data analyst by day, this is as exciting to me as it is confusing. That fabled day-to-night outfit that I can wear to work in the afternoon and a Bushwick loft party later on might actually start to exist (and will probably even be comfortable enough to sleep in).
On a recent weekday at the Strata + Hadoop World conference, mesmerized by the identical dad polo shirts in front of me while waiting for my Python tutorial to start, I decided to compile a trend report. Some background: Strata + Hadoop World, held at New York’s Javitz Center, is the Paris Fashion Week of Big Data. Attendees travel from San Francisco, Austin, Hong Kong, Seoul, and even Paris to attend, trips almost entirely paid for (at a price tag of $2,100) by their companies. These people were smart and were there to learn. True to nerd form, 99 percent of them did not give a fuck about their clothes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from a statistics-based analysis of these clothes.
As you can see in the above graph, polos were ultra-popular. The types of people wearing the polos made me think that perhaps they were serving a sort of middle ground: nicer than a T-shirt but chiller than a button-down. Unfortunately, most looked pretty shlubby. I’d say 90 percent of polos had a white crewneck undershirt peeking out, so when trying to recreate this look, don’t forget that Hanes. Turns out, techies are just like us: they also have an “It” bag, but instead of Marques’Almeida pink sheepskin, they’re all rocking SwissGear backpacks.
Something else that really stuck out (or didn’t, as it were): hoodies are O-V-E-R. Is it because everyone who wore hoodies as a class of ‘07 college grad is now trying to settle down, and the ladies of SF prefer Patagonia? Or, is it part of a larger statement the tech community is making about hoodies (like adidas slides) being appr