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Comment by raymondh | Hacker News Reader

I almost downvoted this comment. What a person wears is a personal decision and irrelevant to this discussion.

No one can wear black turtlenecks anymore without the assumption that they are comparing themselves to Steve Jobs - got it.

You sound like you're being a passive aggressive tosser, but what you say is true. If you are presenting yourself as an innovative leader in disruptive technology, and you choose to dress like the world's most famous innovative leader in disruptive technology, you're choosing to invite the comparison.

You can wear a black turtleneck now and then without appearing to ape Steve Jobs.

You can't wear only black turtlenecks without appearing to ape Steve Jobs.

And Jobs, in turn, selected them to associate himself with the image of artists, jazz musicians, and designers.

Clothes are signals, even when you’re trying to signal that you don’t care about signals :-)

If you are the CEO of a startup? I mean, come on.

Wooooosh. It's a reference to comparing oneself to Steve Jobs. They make fun of it in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in tech culture.

doesn't matter

The Steve Jobs reference wasn't lost on me, but it is a distractor from the central topics of non-accountability, integrity, and management. Especially when women are involved, discussing what outfit is being worn is a red herring and tends to degrade the quality of the thread.

It does when the comment on someone's clothing is whether or not it compliments her figure and if she's wearing this season's colours. Dressing like a clown should be commented upon. Somewhere between these two extremes is deliberately dressing like Steve Jobs.

Maybe. But the Jobs attire is not so special that people wouldn't wear it unless they were trying to emulate him. If I had to pick on dress to wear every single day of my life, it would probably be a grey turtleneck - pretty close.

Although in this case if any male business leader would wear a black turtleneck, they too would be compared to Steve Jobs as well.

>Especially when women are involved, discussing what outfit is being worn

Uh, why is this "especially" so, just because a woman is involved? Why are people so desperate to make everything a gender issue?

The clothing choices of female politicians and business leaders is routinely commented upon by the media, to a far far far far higher degree than males; nobody is making this a gender issue. It already is.

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