What billionaires and CEOs are wearing at this year's Sun Valley Conference: Red, white, and corporate vests
- Execs and celebs headed to the Sun Valley Conference this week, giving us a look into their style.
- The conference, known as "summer camp for billionaires," typically has a casual dress code.
- Attendees wore the requisite vests, red accents, gold accessories, and colored glasses.
Every July, executives in tech, media, and finance flock to the small resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho, for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Forum — aka "summer camp for billionaires."
Attendees usually adhere to a simple dress code of T-shirts, vests, and athleisure for conference sessions in between the rounds of golf, schmoozing, and dealmaking.
This year, the sartorial choices were bolder than usual.
Among the usual muted grays and blues, several attendees were sporting splashes of red. While wearable health-tracking devices like Apple Watches and Oura rings are standard fare for the tech class, this year, some opted for flashier accessories: gold-chain bracelets, big earrings, and bright glasses.
Here's what the who's who of the business world wore at the Sun Valley conference this week.
While T-shirts in tech are nothing new, they have gotten an upgrade.
T-shirts, such as the one worn by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, are now heavier and more fitted, in contrast to the $20 Hanes worn by coders in their college days.
"Now it's thick enough, durable, and quality enough that it's the outer layer," Victoria Hitchcock, a San Francisco Bay Area fashion and lifestyle brander, told Business Insider.
Stacey Bendet Eisner, the CEO of the Alice + Olivia fashion brand, routinely has some of the most eye-catching outfits at Sun Valley.
"Do you think that Mark Zuckerberg gets his makeup done on his way to Sun Valley at 4:30 in the morning, too?" she pondered in a video posted to Instagram.
The political analyst Van Jones arrived in a red sweater — a splash of brightness among the more muted tones typical for the event. The inspiration comes straight from the runway, Hitchcock said, pointing to recent collections from Marni and Valentino.
When it comes to the Sun Valley Conference, there's no shame in sporting branded merch. Many attendees could be seen in red Allen & Company zip-ups or carrying them in case it got chilly.
Hitchcock said "you can't go wrong" when choosing the branded gear. "These are the same people who were wearing the logos of their own companies forever and ever."
The fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg was among a handful of attendees wearing gold-chain jewelry — a trend that Mark Zuckerberg has also recently adopted.
"You see it everywhere — that layered, chunky gold," Hitchcock said.
Brian Grazer, the cofounder of Imagine Entertainment, and Diller were seen sporting yellow lenses, while the CBS news anchor Gayle King made a splash with her bright-green frames.
While Shari Redstone, Bob Iger, and Tim Cook (of course) were spotted wearing Apple Watches, many attendees wore old-fashioned wrist watches instead of digital ones or tracking devices.
"They are super functional, and everyone I interact with owns them," Hitchcock said of the Apple Watch. "But it doesn't keep them from purchasing some of those kind of pieces that are precious and have emotional attachment."
Fashion rules don't discriminate. Regular people and media moguls alike only have three months to wear white. So Sun Valley is a prime time for attendees to don their best colorless looks — like the Phoebe Philo outfit worn by Oprah.
Sánchez, Jeff Bezos' fiancée, wore a quilted miniskirt for the conference and paired it with sneakers for a more informal look.
Bezos himself kept it classic Sun Valley in a T-shirt and vest. Despite some snazzier recent looks from Bezos, his conference outfit shows you can take the tech bro out of the basement — but you can't take the basement out of the tech bro.