Mark Zuckerberg’s new image: Gold chains and Gen-Z curls

If 1.0 was a dorm room disruptor in a hoodie and flip flops and 2.0, a chastened CEO appearing before congress in a suit and tie, 3.0 is a dgaf podcast bro espousing the promise of AI in a gold chain and sunglass tan.

Gone are the dishwater T-shirts and sweats. In their place, Zuck has embraced Capri cabana shirts and Yeezy-esque drop-shouldered tan sweatshirts. He looks like someone trying five years of menswear fashion trends in five months. He has let his hair grow out and became a fit jiu-jitsu obsessive, scrapping with podcaster Lex Fridman and spending time with MMA fighters.

The chain is the beacon of the Zuckassaince. Since spring, he’s been wearing pendulous silver, and later gold necklaces in interviews and Instagram uploads. He looks like a rapper who just sold his first mixtape and bought a gold Cuban link. Or a 13-year-old who splurged out after his birthday at a mall kiosk.

The chain suits Zuckerberg in his extreme made-over moment. He looks unbothered, confident, maybe even a little swaggery. As one comment on an Instagram video in which he wears a necklace articulated, Zuckerberg appears to have “Big chain energy."

Not long ago, the picture was murkier for Zuckerberg and Meta. He was ridiculed for oafish appearances (who else remembers the odd “smoking meats" Facebook Live video) and a 2020 photo of him surfing while caked in so much sunscreen he looked like a geisha. Meta was beset by controversies about the content on its platforms, mocked for its Metaverse initiative and battered by an Apple privacy change that crimped digital ad revenue.

Meta’s controversies continue, but the gilded Zuckaissance has coincided conspicuously with a resurging period for its business, as it leans headlong into becoming an open-source AI destination. The market seems to be responding positively to the pivot: Meta’s stock has increased around 45% since the start of the year.

In a Bloomberg interview in July, Zuckerberg denied knowing anything about a supposed “Zuckaissance," but he’s clearly putting more effort into his appearance now.

Although many in the fashion world believe he must have hired a stylist, a Meta spokesperson denied such claims. The spokesperson added that some of Zuck’s favorite brands include Buck Mason, Todd Snyder and John Elliott. While not avant-garde labels, they do require some level of Google research (or in Zuck’s case, Instagram explore-page wandering) to discover.

And Zuckerberg is now engaging with the fashion world. He might not be attending fashion shows like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, but on his Instagram account you can see him chatting in the comment section with fashion designers like Mike Amiri.

Zuck’s sharper image management was evident on July 4 when he uploaded an Instagram video showing himself clutching an American flag and a beer while wakeboarding. He was wearing a tuxedo and sunglasses, his chain visible over his shirt and not a trace of sunscreen. As one comment said, “Bro is the coolest billionaire CEO ever."

The chain is the most ostentatious element of his style switch-up. It’s something Zuckerberg has clearly thought about. In an April Instagram chat with Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen, Zuckerberg said that he was test-driving several necklaces: “I just want to try out a bunch of different chains, get a sense of the colors, the materials, the thickness, all the different things."

First it was a silver paper-clip chain, then at his 40th birthday in May, a dangly gold link.

As summer arrived, so did another chain—a gold, four-rubied medallion made by New York jeweler Eli Halili. It is inscribed with a Jewish prayer that Zuckerberg says he says to his daughters nightly. Halili said in an interview that several people had contacted him to purchase the necklace, but he had turned them down, as it’s a one-of-a-kind piece that’s “so meaningful" to Zuckerberg. He wouldn’t reveal the cost, though a similar, three-rubied pendant on his website sells for $7,500.

This week, Zuckerberg received still another chain from rapper T-Pain, a gleaming triangular wad, like an oversize shark’s tooth. “That’s awesome," said Zuckerberg in an Instagram post of him trying it on. “The other one wasn’t quite big enough, this definitely, it’s a vibe."

Despite his relative youth, Zuckerberg is a survivor in the tech space. His loose generation of founders—Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter’s Dorsey, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—have all stepped away from the companies they created. But Zuckerberg has endured at the top.

“Zuckerberg is maturing," said Eddie Tabakman, a media training PR consultant in Vancouver, who has worked with tech companies but has not been employed by Meta. “He started out as this 18, 20-year-old founder in the public eye and over time he’s grown and evolved."

Tabakman first noticed the inklings of a Zuck-evolution last year when the Meta founder posted a shirtless photo of himself training with MMA fighters. “There’s a certain level of confidence you need to have in order to do that."

Elon Musk is picking culture war scraps on X. But Zuck? He’s wakeboarding in Lake Tahoe with his family and receiving a gold chain from his friend T-Pain.

And so there is a “whatever bro, I’m doing me" vibe emanating off Zuckerberg these days that’s more Jeff Spicoli than Steve Jobs. In a July online video chat with The Rundown AI CEO Rowan Cheung, Zuckerberg had a clear sunglasses-tan plastered across his face. He looked like an undergrad popping into a Zoom class from his parent’s beach house.

Still, Zuckerberg didn’t tamp down his sharky billionaire instincts for long. On Threads, when a reporter asked about the tan, Zuckerberg said it was caused by a pair of Ray-Bans, a company that Meta collaborates with.

Some onlookers wonder if Zuckerberg 3.0 is a slick PR move. “He’s probably using this glow-up as a recruiting mechanism to find young Gen Z talent that he wants to bring into his company," mused Tabakman. “Authenticity has now become a strategic tool," he said.

That seems to be how his millions of Instagram followers are reading it. As one comment said on this week’s video of him showing off the T-Pain chain, “As AI advances, Zuck becomes more human. Coincidence? I think not."

Write to Jacob Gallagher at jacob.gallagher@wsj.com