Mark Zuckerberg: innovator, CEO, philanthropist, and now, fashion icon. That’s if you believe a new site that popped up today (April 1) promoting a line by the Facebook founder for H&M.
Of course, you shouldn’t believe that site. But as April Fool’s pranks go, it’s actually pretty well done (and certainly a lot less disastrous than Google’s mic drop). The gag collaboration consists entirely of one pair of jeans and seven identical grey t-shirts, presumably one for each day of the week. It’s Zuckerberg’s signature look, as the site makes clear in its “lookbook.” And the collection’s tagline “One less thing to think about in the morning,” is actually the approach Zuckerberg has espoused—the idea is to eliminate the “friction” of deciding what to wear in the morning, and instead devote your mental energy to bigger creative pursuits.
“This new gender-neutral minimalistic range was inspired by Mark’s beliefs that making even the easiest decisions (like what to wear or what to eat for breakfast) consumes mental energy and gets in the way of doing more important things,” the site explains.
The creators even went to the trouble of dreaming up the tags and labels that would appear on the clothes (inside of course, to maintain the plainness of the clothing’s look).
It’s not clear who’s behind the site. ”This is not coming from us and we have no connection to the site,” a spokesperson for H&M replied to a request about it.
We have also reached out to Facebook and the contact address at the site, and will update this story with any new information.
If Zuckerberg did ever collaborate on a fashion line, it’s not hard to imagine it following this format. He himself made a joke recently about his wardrobe, in a Facebook post in January: He asked what he should wear on his first day back in the office after paternity leave, and posted a photo of his closet, filled with identical hoodies and t-shirts.
While he has plenty of company in his “copy + paste” wardrobe philosophy, Zuckerberg is, arguably, a kind of style icon in that he has had a real influence on how the men of Silicon Valley and beyond dress for the office. Women in tech don’t enjoy the same advantage, however. For them, a closet full of t-shirts, hoodies, and jeans—gender-neutral or not—is not yet widely considered acceptable office attire.