"Gone, in other words, was the look immortalized on
magazine covers of Fortune, Forbes and
Glamour (and, yes,
T: The New York Times Style Magazine). The look that inspired a
host of ironic imitators at the beginning of her trial. The look that famously referenced both Steve Jobs (but glamorous!) and Audrey Hepburn.... Instead there was … sartorial neutrality, in the form of a light gray pantsuit and light blue button-down shirt, worn untucked, with baby pink lipstick.... The net effect of Ms. Holmes’s makeover was middle manager or backup secretarial character in a streaming series about masters of the universe (but not her! uh-uh).... If in her previous incarnation Ms. Holmes’s image was crafted to suggest confidence, control and single-minded, maybe ruthless, pursuit of a goal — and it clearly worked, part of the case made for investors — she is now conveying softness and dependency, so unassertive that, as her defense argued, she would make a perfect target for a man to Svengali her.... In this, her makeover is like a version 2.0 of the techniques employed by
Winona Ryder in her 2002 shoplifting trial, when she wore a Marc Jacobs outfit that made her look like a polite schoolgirl, complete with a Peter Pan collar, as well as assorted discreet knee-length hemlines and headbands; or
Anna Sorokin, the society grifter who, in the final days of her 2019 trial, wore sweet baby-doll dresses that practically blared 'innocent.'"
Writes Vanessa Friedman in
"The Verdict on the Elizabeth Holmes Trial Makeover/As the fraud trial of the Theranos founder draws to a close, could her new courtroom image affect the decision?" (NYT).
Of course, when you're on trial, you dress innocent. But if you overdo it, you look like the con artist they're saying you are. And yet, how easily she conned sophisticated older men with a dumb black turtleneck and red lipstick! Who knows what you can do — what the right person can do — with fashion?
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23 comments:
It was a sophisticated con. She’s going to prison.
"And yet, how easily she conned sophisticated older men with a dumb black turtleneck and red lipstick!" I guess there were no female investors to con. But, from the article: "While Ms. Holmes’s lawyers described the efforts of Ramesh Balwani, her former boyfriend and Theranos partner, to control what she ate and how she came across, and though they submitted into evidence a text that read “I have molded you,” they did not say it was Mr. Balwani who came up with the idea of the black turtleneck. Which suggests that the image-making, at least, was all her own." Sounds more like it was Balwani who groomed her to fool everyone, maybe even the non-binary investors as well.
I have not followed it closely. Did she talk in that weird affected deep voice when she testified?
'And yet, how easily she conned sophisticated older men with a dumb black turtleneck and red lipstick!'
The best and the brightest. It only shows that we had (and have) idiots in charge of our military and everything else.
The smartest people in the room work in the private sector, not DC.
Fashion might have been the icing on the cake, but what sold Theranos was the popular superficial impression of fast and easy analytical Biochemistry taught by decades of CSI cinematic brainwashing.
It didn't work for poor Winona. Check out the photos of her at the trial. Too much an actress and too beautiful to look restrained and meek and dowdy. I wonder what was going on in the picture where she's looking crosswise and crossly at her attorney, or the picture where she's rising up, mouth open and indignant. Was that when the verdict came in?
She should have stayed with Johnny Depp. Maybe they could have kept each other out of trouble.
If you want to know how savvy and smart George Schultz was and Jim Mattis is, consider their actions on the Theranos board.
Elizabeth also carries a diaper bag backpack to court to remind jurors she is new mother and if they find her guilty they will be tearing her away from her infant son. Elizabeth Holmes will walk.
She only "conned" men who are pushing the feminist lies. Some like Mattis were stupid but most of them knew what they were getting.
The men at the top of the Pareto distribution do not mind fucking over the other 99% of men.
It gets more women around them to abuse.
And women are demonstrating they don't actually want anything to change. The women populating the democrat party don't mind a few rapes and some grooming during their early career as long as they get a plum position later on even if they are completely unprepared like Kamala Harris.
This example just bleeds down into the rest of society.
Who knows what you can do — what the right person can do — with fashion?
Anyone who has paid attention to human history and human behavior in the slightest? Appearances matter, and one of the filthiest lies of the past twenty or thirty years is that somehow we shouldn't care about appearance, that we should somehow "look beyond it."
Fun fact. Both Sorokin and Ryder were found guilty despite their attire, though not of all charges. Sorokin was acquitted of attempted grand larceny for filing a fraudulent loan application but found guilty of just about everything else, and Ryder was acquitted of a charge of burglary after being found guilty of shoplifting, grand theft, and vandalism.
It's the new con, this time for a jury.
The original con started before the arrival of Sunny Balwani. He was the sucker who had to play along once he was invested. He's the old Indian guy who's going to be the scapegoat for the blonde white woman. Sunny, thank you for playing, but you were the perfect loser.
She was pretending to be the next Steve Jobs and they fell for it.
"Bad Blood" is worth the read.
"how easily she conned sophisticated older men with a dumb black turtleneck and red lipstick!"
Beauty is power, and I think that wisdom is a kind of thinking that elides many details, and so it can be hacked and overcome. Who knows, maybe she came to believe her own bullshit because these silver haired old gentlemen seemed to believe it too.
A couple of weeks ago I offered to bet $5 that she would cry during her testimony.
Unfortunately, nobody took me up on it.
She did cry as she explained why, because she had been raped 15 years ago none of this was her fault.
I've been listening to the podcast "the dropout" which has been covering the trial in depth.
Also "Bad Blood" podcast with John carryout.
Both very good but the dropout is the better of the 2
John LGBTQBNY Henry
The jury has seen clips of here appearing on CNBC and elsewhere in her black turtleneck and with the phony deep voice. Those artifacts were all gone, of course, when she testified. Will the jury treat her as a strong adult woman or as the vulnerable victim she's gunning for?
Sometimes I think the fascination of a trial lies in the inner dialogue with ourselves which a trial promotes. As, What if my past suddenly all became a crime, sort of like Kafka, and so I became an American crook trying evade American justice - should I start by a fashion change and go on to a lawyer - is anything else reasonable? But what if I were not a crook? What if I were starring in Our Times - the trial of a Cancelled? Should I dye my hair green and purple to arouse sympathy? and red, white and blue on the other side to hold the base? Well, for me, it's all academic. I've been in media firestorms in my life and one thing I realize is that the media doesn't want a story about right-wing protestors and still less do they want one about a librarian, so to speak, and what she found on dusty shelves ("a first edition of The Vanity of Human Wishes - imagine") or anywhere else in any other way ("another Hunter Biden laptop, imagine"). They go for the colorful ones.
"Who knows what you can do...with fashion?" Prof. A, I seem to recall your saying that, early on (before law career), you worked in the world of fashion publications, where you applied (and developed) your uncanny sensibility for that part of our culture. So I look at your quoted question as very much tongue-in-cheek. If anybody can claim to know what can be done with fashion, it's you.
In the case of Ms. Holmes, I venture to say we have an intersectionality; where women's fashion meets sociopathology. She's an apex predator and (metaphorically at least) she was dressed to kill.
A fake now, then, and forever.
I'm sorry, but it was the feminists who were her biggest fan club.
People with a lot of money can hire consultants for anything, even trial attire. What I wonder about is how someone goes from leading a normal life to becoming a consultant for trial attire to the fabulously wealthy criminals of today. Interesting work, I'd guess, if you can get it.
Or do the lawyers tell the clients what to wear, based on their own experience before the bench? Because an hourly rate for such services from a law firm might scare most people away.
The all black semicasual look was best worn by Mike Meyers in SNL's parody commercials for the frictoinless, also all black, Infiniti Toilet. Now available with cup holder.
If she's acquitted she can divorce the new husband and abort the kid. There's still time.
Liz was probably better able to convey vulnerability when she was playing Master of the Universe than she is now. When a conwoman loses her confidence, her repertory shrinks.
Amanda Seyfried replaced Kate McKinnon in the miniseries. I would imagine that whoever made the original casting decision has also been replaced. I'd rather see the story done (at least semi-)seriously, not as another idiotic Big Short-type send-up.
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