Lisa Weeks is clad in a black catsuit-style outfit with a high-tech coat-of-arms-style logo on the back hyping her soon-to-be-debuted video-game company, TurboPlay. She’s also wearing knee-high platform boots with sound- activated LED meter displays and a pair of LED-lit glasses propped behind the bangs of her silvery wig. She is quite literally glowing.
Though she looks like a character from a sci-fi space opera when we meet, it’s a typical Wednesday for Weeks—she’s no more or less dressed, wigged, and tech-accessorized than usual. She wears costumes all the time, even in corporate settings. She owns more than 100 wigs.
She’s also warm, effervescent, and completely natural in her weirdness—in fact, by leaning into her geekiness, passion for costuming, and love of video games, she’s made weirdness into a personal brand. In her 2013 TEDxSeattle talk, “The Economy of Weird,” she discussed how her persona has benefited the companies she’s worked for: “Because you stand out, you’re memorable. And especially if you do it well, if you do it authentically, not like it’s some kind of contrived shtick, then it will really make an impression, it will advance the brand awareness, it will resonate with people, and it provides a talking point.”
