“Look, here’s the thing about being rich, it’s like being a superhero, only better. You get to do what you want. The authorities can’t really touch you. You get to wear a costume, but it’s designed by Armani and it doesn’t make you look like a prick.” Could Tom Wambsgans (Matthew McFadyen’s obsequious, money-and-power-craving character in the hit show Succession ) have summed up life for the 0.1 per cent any better? The Roy family are media moguls trying to adapt to the new tech age, and television right now is particularly obsessed with Silicon Valley billionaires – all of whom have a uniform of sorts. First, there is The Dropout , which follows Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes – a young woman who fooled half of America into thinking she had invented the future of medicine, despite the fact her much vaunted blood testing machine never actually worked. The show illustrates how important her clothing was in presenting herself as a serious prospect , even though her product was anything but. For the first few episodes, Holmes wears a series of shapeless hoodies and baggy jeans – and the world only starts taking her seriously when she swaps her student outfits for her ubiquitous black turtlenecks, messy updos and bright red lipstick. Costume designer Claire Parkinson tried a number of different turtlenecks for Seyfried, sourcing a vintage Issey Miyake number and eventually settling on one from Wolford that had just the right degree of stretchiness. “Elizabeth Holmes is costuming herself, and we are costuming her as she’s costuming herself,” explained Elizabeth Meriwether, the creator and executive producer of the show. “There’s always a lot of emotional weight behind what she’s wearing.” Holmes has, of course, borrowed her uniform from the man everyone in Silicon Valley wants to be called “the next” of: Steve Jobs. Famously acknowledging that it’s “one less decision he has to make every day”, the late Apple founder was known for wearing the same thing for decades : black turtlenecks, Levi’s 501s and New Balance trainers. Fashion is, of course, different when you’re very successful. Television shows sometimes make the mistake of thinking that means head-to-toe designer labels – but as Jobs and Holmes show, it is often about building a brand around yourself and how you style yourself. “It’s called enclothed cognition,” explains psychologist Adam Galonsky. “The wearer takes on the symbolic value of the clothes they wear.” Very rich people also have different considerations from the rest of us. Imagine what you’d wear if you never had to take the bus or go to a supermarket; how would you dress if every room was set to your perfect temperature and heat and humidity were never a question. A good example of this comes from WeCrashed , a show starring Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto, who embody Rebekah and Adam Neumann, the rather odd couple behind the rise and fall of co-working company WeWork. While researching what sort of coat Jared Leto’s character would wear, the costume designers couldn’t decide between Savile Row and French brands, until they realised they had been asking the wrong question all along. Someone who is shuttled from Michelin-starred restaurant to climate-controlled limousine to luxury flat doesn’t need a coat, no matter if there’s a snowstorm outside. This way of thinking permeates all the fashion on the show. Hathaway’s character, who is also Gwyneth Paltrow ’s cousin, wears silk backless dresses: the kind of item you can only wear in a temperature controlled environment and certainly not on public transport. Her beige silk skirts and perfectly pressed shirts also scream, “I don’t do my own laundry”. Of the three shows about tech founders that are currently airing, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber is probably the most realistic. A series on the rise and fall of Uber’s grandiose CEO Travis Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it puts its star in a uniform of plain blue shirts and round neck navy jumpers. This is closer to how most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs – and the thousands who aspire to be like them – dress: in button down shirts or T-shirts, jeans and white trainers. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Evan Spiegel are rarely seen in anything else and it has almost become a badge of honour; the implication being that they are so powerful that they can interact with almost anyone in America while dressed like your average student. They do of course work with stylists – one of whom is Victoria Hitchcock, who has plenty of advice for entrepreneurs who haven’t yet made it big. “I’m sorry, but you can’t be taken seriously by professionals, or raise money from investors, when you’re wearing an old T-shirt,” she said in an article for Vox . “So I am constantly getting this question: ‘How do I make myself look respectable?’” The solution? “We call it effortless style,” she says, before adding rather tellingly: “I want my clients to look like they don’t care.”