Billionaire AI chief says his viral $3,500 outfit starts with $30 thrift-store shirt

Meta's billionaire AI chief Alexandr Wang says the Meta Connect outfit that social media users priced at US$3,500 in luxury labels began with a deer-print shirt he bought at a Santa Cruz thrift store for $30.

Alexandr Wang at Meta Connect 2026 on Sept. 23, 2026

Wang wore the 1990s-style camouflage tee, printed with a large deer head above a wooded trail and more deer, with "Lake Tahoe" on the sleeve, during his keynote at the developer conference on Sept. 23. He paired it with black pants and camouflage Crocs, Business Insider reported.

Some X users soon suggested the look was quiet luxury in disguise. A post by the account Goltra itemized it as an $800 Hermès shirt, $1,200 Loro Piana pants and $1,500 Ferragamo shoes, a $3,500 total, and drew 3.4 million views within a day.

A community note added to the post pointed out that Hermès does not make hunter-style T-shirts.

Wang hit back on Sept. 24, writing on X: "Excuse me I must correct the record on this slander." He said the shirt came from a Santa Cruz thrift store for $30, the pants cost $150, the Crocs about $60 and his Calvin Klein underwear $5.

When another user reshared the luxury claim and said Wang looked like he had been working out, Wang replied that if people say he looks fit, "I don't care how much you lie about how much my clothes cost."

Wang has spent recent weeks flooding X with memes to promote Muse, Meta's new personal AI agent, according to Business Insider.

Muse launched Sept. 8 and has sat atop Apple's U.S. App Store since Sept. 18, TechCrunch reported, citing Sensor Tower data.

Wang also wore a deer-print camouflage shirt for his interview on Ashlee Vance's Core Memory podcast in May and to several large internal meetings, Business Insider reported. The outlet guessed his Connect shirt could be a vintage 1990s "Back to Earth" tee, after finding similar ones on eBay and Poshmark for $14 to $45.

Silicon Valley executives have long turned clothing into a signature, from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's leather jacket to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' black turtleneck. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has traded the gray T-shirts and jeans of his early years for premium T-shirts, hoodies and gold chains.

Wang, who Forbes estimates is worth $3.2 billion, co-founded data-labeling startup Scale AI in 2016 at age 19. In June 2025, Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49% nonvoting stake in Scale AI and hired Wang as its first chief AI officer to lead Meta Superintelligence Labs.