What Elon Musk’s Suit Says About Trump and Power

Last week, President Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked a seemingly simple question about the White House dress code.

A reporter pointed out that administration officials were “miffed” that the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, had not worn a suit to the Oval Office. And yet, the reporter said: “Elon Musk never wears a suit in there. So what is the dress code?”

As with all things in Washington, this was really a question about power.

Mr. Musk flexes his by dressing down where all others must dress up. He wears his “tech support” T-shirt around town and to meetings with the president.

So when the tech mogul wore a suit and tie twice last week, just like any other working stiff in Washington, it seemed like a sign that maybe some of the old rules of this place — and the ones about fashion and etiquette are among the oldest — were suddenly being applied to this most special of government employees.

Somehow when Mr. Musk puts on a nice suit, it has a way of looking like a demotion.

There is no doubt that he and Mr. Trump are still on this ride together — the president even posted on social media on Tuesday that he was buying a Tesla — but last week things began to change a bit for Mr. Musk. Cabinet secretaries started to stand up to him. Mr. Trump said he would have to use a “scalpel” instead of a “hatchet” to make government cuts. Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill started to worry about him.

Ms. Leavitt said in her briefing that when Mr. Musk put on a suit for the president’s address to Congress, “I think the president liked that very much.” He wore one again two days later for the second meeting of the cabinet. (He had worn the “tech support” T-shirt to the first one and joked about the way he was dressed.)

Suits are no small thing for Donald Trump. His father, a real estate developer, wore one every day, even on visits to construction sites. The son eventually did the same. And now his three sons (even the teenage one) favor suits and tie their ties in the same thick-knotted way as their father.

Mr. Musk is fundamentally a creature of Silicon Valley, a scene that initiated an entire revolution in power dressing. The young masters of that universe dressed down to show that they were members of a new elite — one that refused to dress like the grown-ups they were about to topple. It was the defeat of the suit by the T-shirt.

But Washington remains the one town more than any other in which people still wear suits and ties. That’s why it’s peculiar to see Mr. Musk suit up now: He is ultimately dressing up as the very thing he has come here to destroy — the gray-suited bureaucrat.

“Maybe he felt underdressed,” said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally whose sentence on seven felonies was commuted by the president in 2020.

Mr. Stone, a noted clotheshorse, published a book of his life’s lessons called “Stone’s Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style.” One of the rules states that “if you are engaged in any business or profession, you are much more likely to succeed if you are well dressed than if you are badly dressed.”

He said he liked seeing Mr. Musk all dressed up. “I thought he looked great,” said Mr. Stone. “But I doubt you’ll see him wearing one every day. It’s not his style.”

Does Mr. Stone suspect that the president is bothered by Mr. Musk’s style? “I can’t speculate about that,” he demurred.

It always seemed hard to believe that, of all people, Mr. Trump was OK with Mr. Musk dressing the way he does.

The president is almost never seen not wearing a full Brioni suit and tie (unless he is on one of his golf courses). During his first term in office, he yelled at his original press secretary Sean Spicer about his choice of suit.

Mr. Trump once had his own line of suits (they were sold at Macy’s) and wrote in one of his books that “the way we dress says a lot about us before we ever say a word.”

“To me, dressing successfully means understanding your environment: knowing the culture and making an effort to reflect and respect it.”

So how is it that the same man who wrote that could allow his most empowered deputy to dress like a goth mall rat in the most important workplace in the world?

There seemed to be a rare moment last month when Mr. Trump seemed a little bothered by Mr. Musk’s style, when the two men sat side-by-side for an interview on Fox News.

Each wore their respective uniforms: a suit and a T-shirt.

“He’s got some very brilliant people working for him,” Mr. Trump said in Mr. Musk’s defense. And yet, these very brilliant people manage to “dress much worse than him, actually.”

“You wouldn’t know that they have an I.Q. of 180,” the president added.