Elizabeth Holmes had a very specific reason for always wearing black turtlenecks
Elizabeth Holmes claims she owns roughly 150 identical black turtlenecks, and there's a very specific reason she wore the same 'uniform' to work every single day.
The former Theranos CEO, now serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud, became almost as well known for her all-black wardrobe as she was for her company's now-discredited blood-testing technology.
According to a 2015 Glamour interview, Holmes said the habit actually started in childhood, telling the magazine, 'My mom had me in black turtlenecks when I was like eight.'
By the time she was running Theranos, Holmes said sticking to one outfit freed up mental energy for the business itself. 'It's my uniform,' she said.
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"It makes it easy because every day you put on the same thing and don't have to think about it, one less thing in your life. All my focus is on the work."
Why did Elizabeth Holmes start wearing black turtlenecks?
Holmes wasn't always the sleek, monochrome figure the public came to recognise. Former Theranos employee Ana Arriola, speaking to the podcast The Dropout, claimed that in the company's early days Holmes actually favoured 'frumpy Christmas sweaters' rather than austere black. Arriola said she pointed out that Apple founder Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck and Levi's jeans every day of his life, and Holmes adopted the same look shortly after.
Jobs' own uniform is detailed in Walter Isaacson's biography, Jobs, which notes he liked having a signature outfit both for its convenience and its branding power.
His turtlenecks came from Japanese designer Issey Miyake, the man behind the 'Pleats Please' trend of the 1990s. Arriola claimed Holmes tracked down the same designer for her own wardrobe, telling the podcast, "I think she went off and tracked down who Issey Miyake was, and the rest is couture history."
Tyler Schultz, another former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, described the reverence Holmes commanded in her early years in the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. "Everyone worshipped her," he said. "She could do no wrong. She was the next Steve Jobs."
What happened to Elizabeth Holmes after Theranos collapsed?
Holmes was ultimately convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy after Theranos' blood-testing claims were exposed as false.
The Department of Justice found she was responsible for wire fraud totalling more than $140 million, while the Securities and Exchange Commission separately charged her with defrauding investors out of $700 million in a civil case.
She was sentenced in November 2022 to 135 months in prison and surrendered to authorities on April 27, 2023, shortly after giving birth to her second child.
Interest in her story has resurfaced repeatedly since, most recently through the A24-backed documentary You Can See Everything, filmed in the weeks before she began her sentence, and the upcoming film Bad Blood, starring Jennifer Lawrence.
Topics: Fashion, True crime, Steve Jobs
Thomas Bamford