The Bay Area gets a lot of shit for bad fashion, and a lot of people point to those fashionably clueless folks who wear their company's free swag t-shirts five days a week because they don't know any better. But the folks at Banana Republic are trying to change the perception of techie style as fashion faux pas by claiming "the Startup Guy" the new look of the summer season.
According to VentureBeat, BR has just rolled out a line that's a hat tip to dudes who work in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Think boat shoes, Oxford button-ups, and rolled-up khakis, not crocs, fleece vests, and unrolled-up khakis. So basically, the regular vanilla Banana Republic clothing you'd expect, just imagine that the dude in the catalog might have invented that app you're using to read this article.
To be fair to Banana Republic, the look they're going for is (still) pretty popular in SF right now, but personally, I'd call it "the Slick Rich Guy" more than "the Startup Guy." In fact, I just received a press release from eBay last week that claims "the Hipster Trend is Coming to an End." The release goes on to say, "Fortunately, eBay has the menswear threads and grooming products to seamlessly transition any dude's hipster style to a more polished and clean-cut look." Oh, how fortunate!
I guess the best news from all this brouhaha is that we can officially say startup chic has jumped the shark.
[Via: VanishingSF; VentureBeat, Valleywag, Business Insider, Fast Company; photos via Banana Republic]