During the last retirement organized by the Investment Bank Allen & Company in Sun Valley, the big tech bosses and other billionaires all wore this headgear. A code that could not be more American, with several symbols.
Ask any American billionaire – preferably over 50 – which he is doing in summer when he finds his colleagues in the northwest of the United States at an ultra -landed conference. He will surely answer the cap. Last week at the Sun Valley summit, this retirement organized each year by the Allen & Company investment bank, the head accessory was proudly sported by almost all the CEOs and giant tech giants invited to the event.
From the first day, Michael Eisner, 83, ex-director of Walt Disney Company (from 1984 to 2005) and founder of the American private investment company The Tornant Company, landed dressed in a striped shirt, a gray V-neck sweater, chino pants and an electric blue cap stamped with the logo of the British football club. The same day, Yoav Gottesman, former president of Jli Group Plc, covered his head with a embroidered jeans “noble folk”, a Sonoma county glacier in California, a few hours north of Silicon Valley. While Barry McCarthy, 70, former financial director of Spotify and current president of Peloton Interactive, set his sights on a broken white model of the Titleist logo, equipment supplier specializing in golf.
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Pass advertising
Like a rallying code, a parade of caps marked the conference week. To the point that those who did not adorn their own model proudly displayed that of the Sun Valley conference of 2025. A navy blue model, embroidered with letters “S” and “V” and “25” for 2025, seen on Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Chris Urmson (Aurora Innovation), Jerry Yang (Ame Cloud Ventures), Reed Hastings (Netflix), others. A bit like a printed t-shirt by the name of a rock group that we get the merchandising stand at the end of a concert.
Masculine power
For a long time, the cap especially allowed celebrities to go unnoticed in the streets. A technique which Leonardo DiCaprio still uses, who concealed his face behind a black model during the marriage of Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos last June in Venice. But in addition to this exception, it turns out that the ultra -ties are now carrying the cap not to be discreet, but rather to stand out.
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Accessory Sportswear, easy to wear and very connoted male, the cap is indeed ideal for subtly exhibiting the logo of a company whose success has covered its founder with gold and power. This is at least what we tell the many variations identified last week in Sun Valley. David Zaslav, Managing Director of Warner Bros. Discovery, for example, was photographed with a white cap with the “WB” logo, when that of Casey Wasserman, president of the organizing committee of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, unveiled the 2028 Olympic logo.
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Finally, the cap can also symbolize in the most powerful a certain idea of America. In the same way as the Stetson -this cowboy hat worn in Sun Valley by Jason Ballard, founder of the ICON 3D printing company -, the cap praises the merits of the American dream. She evokes these BCBG versions proposed by Ralph Lauren, an emblematic brand of the American preppy locker room, as well as those of supporters in the stands of basketball matches, which makes her naturally universal. What is more, when a senior business leader in the door with a simple T-shirt and jeans, she underlines the famous image of the young geek of the school promised to a billionaire future. “A uniform generally adopted by the thinking heads which attach little importance to what they put on in the morning,” said sociologist Jamil Dakhlia already last April, in reference to the caps of the cap: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
What you have to understand is that when an ultra-tie at the head of an American-known American company has a embroidered cap of the badge of his business, he praises, without necessarily needing to do too much, life in the United States in 2025. As if to say that it is always possible to raise mountains, even when the country is governed by a policy as controversial as that of Donald Trump. The American president who himself has his own cap of cap.
