The droning is the first thing that gets you. It’s not the CEO’s voice, which is a carefully modulated baritone designed to convey stability even while announcing the 7th consecutive quarter of missed projections. No, it’s the physical hum of the room. The sound of 237 tons of climate-controlled air being forced through polished chrome vents, mingling with the low-frequency buzz from a wall of LED screens. It’s a sound designed to be ignored, but once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it. It’s the sound of expensive, powerful, suffocating sameness.

On the stage, under lights so bright they erase all wrinkles, sit the seven men who run the world, or at least this corner of it. They could be brothers. Not identical, but clearly from the same tribe. The uniform is non-negotiable: dark suit, either navy or charcoal, so dark it’s almost black. White shirt, starched to the point of being a load-bearing structure. Muted tie, either a placid blue or a vaguely apologetic burgundy. Black shoes polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the drone of the lights above. They are interchangeable. If one of them were to slump over, a stagehand could drag him away and replace him with a spare from the wings, and it would take the market 47 minutes to notice.

We’re told this is the look of success. The armor of the modern titan. I call it what it is: a costume of profound fear. This isn’t a uniform of power; it’s a uniform of risk-aversion. It’s the visual equivalent of a forward-looking statement read in a monotone by a lawyer. It’s an outfit meticulously designed to signal absolutely nothing. It is a gray rock, a chameleon against a concrete wall, a creature whose primary survival strategy is to be so utterly uninteresting that predators simply pass it by.

I know a woman, Morgan G., a court sketch artist. She’s one of the last of her kind, a master of graphite and charcoal in an age of digital photography. Her job is to capture the humanity of people at their absolute worst-accused, accuser, grieving witness. She has 7 minutes to find the soul in a face contorted by fear or rage and put it on paper. She once told me the hardest subjects aren’t the ones who are screaming or crying. They’re the white-collar criminals. The embezzlers, the fraudsters, the men who move decimal points and ruin 17,000 lives by lunchtime.

Last year, a major tech firm hired her to sketch their annual board meeting for the shareholder report. They thought it would be a folksy, authentic touch. She quit after two days. She showed me her sketchbook, and it was terrifying. Page after page of the same man, over and over. Same jawline, same haircut, same vacant stare. Except it wasn’t one man. It was seventeen of them. She couldn’t find a defining feature, an anchor point, a single tic or scar that made any of them unique. They had achieved perfect corporate camouflage.

When every leader looks the same, it sends a message that echoes down through the entire organization, louder than any all-hands memo. The message is: assimilation is the path to advancement. Your unique perspective, your strange hobbies, your unconventional background-these are not assets. They are liabilities to be managed and, eventually, scrubbed away. To get a seat at the table, you must first prove you are willing to become part of the furniture.

I remember the first “real” suit I ever bought. I was up for a promotion, and a mentor, a man I respected deeply, pulled me aside.

He didn’t have to explain. I was wearing a slightly-too-adventurous tweed jacket. I went to a store he recommended, a place that smelled of cedar and quiet money. The tailor, a man of at least 137, tut-tutted at me. He put me in a charcoal gray suit that cost $1,777. It was beautiful, I suppose. It fit perfectly. It also erased me. I wore it to the final interview and saw two other candidates in the lobby. We were all wearing the same suit. I felt like I was at a casting call for a character named “Generic Businessman #7.” I got the promotion. And for a year, I thought that suit was my key to the kingdom. I was wrong. It was just my entry fee into the camouflage.

I used to tell people the same thing my mentor told me. “Dress for the job you want.” I was perpetuating the myth. I was an agent of the sameness. I honestly believed that the only way to succeed was to sublimate your own identity to the corporate ideal. A small, stupid event made me reconsider.

A few weeks ago, on a conference call with my boss and his boss, I fumbled my phone and accidentally hung up on both of them. A jolt of pure adrenaline and horror went through me. For about 47 seconds, I was convinced my career was over. I had been clumsy. Imperfect. I had disrupted the frictionless flow of the corporate machine. I called back, stammering an apology, but my boss was laughing. It broke the tension. We ended up having the most honest, productive conversation I’d had in years. That tiny, accidental act of non-conformity didn’t get me fired; it made me human.

There’s a parallel in military history. For centuries, military uniforms were bright, garish, and unique-scarlet redcoats, plumed helmets, gleaming breastplates. They were designed to intimidate, to project power, to say “Here I am. I am a force to be reckoned with.” Then, warfare changed. The goal was no longer to stand on a field in formation, but to hide in a trench, to blend into the jungle. Camouflage was born. The uniform’s purpose shifted from projecting presence to erasing it entirely. Business has made the same transition. We’ve gone from the flamboyant, risk-taking entrepreneur to the camouflaged, risk-averse manager. We are all hiding in the trenches, terrified of being seen. But what if you’re not trying to hide? What if you are trying to lead? Hiding is the worst possible strategy. You have to show a flash of color.

This doesn’t require a revolution. You don’t need to show up in a neon green suit. The system is too entrenched for that. The genius lies in subverting the uniform, not abandoning it. It’s about reclaiming a single piece of real estate on your person and making a deliberate, conscious choice. You can wear the navy suit-the price of admission-but you can choose to pair it with something that signals you are a person, not just a position. The entire history of menswear has pivoted on these small details. For decades, the tie was the one acceptable canvas for male expression. While that has expanded, the tie remains a focal point. Choosing from a selection of handmade silk ties is an exercise in this exact kind of subtle subversion. It’s not about peasticking; it’s a quiet declaration that your identity is not for sale, that you have a point of view, and that you trust your own taste. It says, “I am wearing the uniform, but I am not in uniform.”

That person made a choice that wasn’t the safest one available. The safest choice is the muted blue. A tie with a complex pattern, an unusual texture, a surprising color palette-that choice signals an attention to detail beyond the spreadsheet. It suggests an appreciation for craft and aesthetics. It implies that the wearer is comfortable with a small, calculated risk. Are these not the exact qualities we claim to want in our leaders?

I think back to Morgan G., the sketch artist. After she told me about the corporate boardroom, I asked her a hypothetical question. If she had to draw those men again, and her goal was to make one of them memorable, what would she have him do? She didn’t hesitate.

The next time you’re in a meeting, or watching a panel on the news, ignore the faces. They’ve been media-trained into masks. Ignore the suits; they’re just camouflage. Look for the details. Look for the choices. Look for the person who decided one small piece of who they are was not going to be erased by the hum of the machine.