Motor trends
There are captains of industry, and then there are commodores. For a few short hours at the start of the Los Angeles Auto Show, the flag-rank executives of the automotive business -- chief executives, head designers and other board-level types -- jetted in to field questions from reporters and brag on their latest lumps of road-going gorgeousnessness. You might suspect auto executives of being merely the most exalted form of plaid-wearing car salesmen, but these gentlemen -- and they are, almost without exception, men -- are some of the most beautifully dressed and perfectly appointed man-divas you’ll ever meet (if you’re not hustled aside by their handlers). They have to be. Commanding multibillion-dollar global empires with the stroke of a Tibaldi pen, auto execs are the walking, talking embodiments of their brands. They work in a business obsessed with image and design. Their personal presentation is a form of company equity.
The Los Angeles Auto Show, which ends today at the Convention Center, offers unusually good access to these titans of transportation, and so we took the opportunity to quiz them about their personal style, their clothing choices and their guilty fashion pleasures.
