Geek chic: The Gates look is hot
"Bill would wear this," Park says. He points to a shirt he has rejected and notes: "The collar on this one is too floppy. Definitely not Bill's style."
William H. Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., may not be considered the epitome of chic in America, but in Seoul he is a serious style icon. Young South Koreans believe that dressing for success means mimicking Gates's wardrobe, down to his round, tortoise-shell eyeglasses, unpolished shoes and wrinkle-free pants.
"Gates fashion," as it is called here, will possibly strike American ears as an oxymoron. But it threatens to change the Korean sartorial scene. Until very recently, businessmen here wore dark suits exclusively; nothing short of absolute conformity was acceptable for the long climb up the ladder at Korea's behemoth corporations. But the high-tech mania gripping the nation -- despite a recent downturn in Korean tech stocks -- has convinced entrepreneurs that Gates's easygoing dress will yield Gates-size fortunes.
Turning yourself into a Bill lookalike is a job in itself. The tall, thin, boyish-looking Park likes to let several days pass without shampooing, to match what he calls Gates's "natural oily look." He religiously monitors financial magazines and television shows to stay abreast of Gates's latest wardrobe variations. While nurturing his start-up, called @phone Inc., Park forswore his Giorgio Armani and Hugo Boss suits and spent months searching Seoul for the perfect places to buy plain, roomy clothing. Anything that requires dry-cleaning goes right back on the rack because, Park says, "Bill doesn't wear high-maintenance clothes." Thumbs down to silk and synthetic fabric -- only cotton will do.
At Park's office and at many others around town, chairs are filled with Gates clones. "I don't care if I look geeky," says Choi Hyun Chul, president of Internet-software start-up iSun Internet Inc. Clad in worn-out brown cotton pants, a plaid button-down shirt and round eyeglasses, Choi says, "I believe this is the way to dress to be successful."
When Choi, 31, began dressing like Bill a year ago, his puzzled wife often asked him in the morning if he was staying home from work. "It took some time for my wife to get adjusted to the idea of my not wearing a tie and suit to work," Choi says. But he won her over by arguing that trading in a tie for a wrinkled shirt would make her a rich man's wife.
Through a spokesman, Gates declined to comment on his status as a Seoul fashion god.
Why model yourself on rumpled Bill? Why not copy Apple Computer Inc.'s Steve Jobs, whose taste runs to black, or the suave Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp., often seen sporting Italian designer-wear?
In part, it's simply that Gates has spent such a long time as the world's top tech titan. But Kim Tae Kyung, a marketing manager at iSun, says his conversion to Bill-ism is an ethical stand: The billionaire's no-frills style is "the honest look." So Kim, 35, gave away his Givenchy ties to his old-fashioned cousins.
What's more, Kim believes that dressing like Gates has improved his personality: The polished look he once sported made him act like a know-it-all, he says. Now, "what you see is what you are," he says, dressed casually in a button-down, light-blue cotton shirt and faded blue pants. "I think that's the message Gates is trying to get across."
But some Gates acolytes say their unenlightened colleagues are getting a rather different message. Yoo Do Wook, the 31-year-old founder of KDB Corp., a wireless Internet-software company, says friends have told him that his casual getup makes him "look like a farmer." But so what, he sniffs. "I can justify the way I dress by telling them that it's the Gates look."
Fashion researchers and Gates followers say the trend is the result of the transformation of the once-isolated Korean economy and the coming of globalization. Young entrepreneurs are trying to import the creativity that has distinguished the heroes of the U.S. technology boom, and they associate Gates's down-to-earth trousers and shirts with a new way of doing business. "The clothes that Bill wears are practical and functional -- just like the way Americans approach matters," says Choi of iSun.
Some designers say Gates fashion is a form of rebellion for the postadolescent crowd. Korean teens are locked in a regimented school system where they must wear only dark-colored uniforms and can't even choose their own hairstyles. "Strict dress codes impede people from thinking creatively," says Kim Jung Hee, a fashion researcher at Samsung Fashion Institute. She says the Gates look is popular because people believe it is "the clothing of liberation."
Koreans are snapping up plain blue shirts and wrinkle-free pants at such a breakneck pace that one major Korean clothes company, Cheil Industries, has dedicated a design team to creating just the right look for the Gates-crazed. The team, comprising 11 designers, sits side-by-side in a cramped room full of fabric samples, ranging from plaids to an assortment of earth-toned colors. For inspiration, the Cheil designers keep a board covered with pictures of Gates by their desks.
In October, Cheil began working up a new line inspired by Microsoft's recent battle with U.S. antitrust authorities -- which hasn't dented Gates's popularity in Korea. On the drawing board are dun-colored cotton pants, black leather belts with copper or iron buckles, and the requisite light-blue shirts.
Lately, the team has noticed that the maturing mogul seems to don more suits than he once did. For his imitators, this may mean it's time for a bit of a makeover. Song Moon Young, a designer at Cheil, would provide only this hint about the company's coming lineup: "Bill Gates has been appearing in court wearing shoulder-pad-free jackets."