There’s a new tech titan in town and he’s preparing to enter the pantheon. How do we know?
Well, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, has the company: he co-founded Nvidia in 1993, and its market cap is now around $950 billion, though it was briefly in the $1 trillion club at the end of May, putting it in a comparable class to Apple, Alphabet and Amazon.
He has the product: a data processing chip that is essential to the development of AI, i.e. the life of ChatGPT and Bard, i.e. the current paradigm shift.
And he’s got the look: a black leather jacket he always wears when he’s out in the public eye, usually with a black T-shirt and black jeans.
Mr. Huang wore a black leather jacket when featured on the cover of Time as one of the Men of the Year in 2021. A black leather jacket during his keynote speeches at multiple GTC developer conferences since 2018. To celebrate the 2023 World ITF keynote and the 2023 Computex 2023 keynote. He even identified himself, back in a Reddit AMA in 2016, as “the man in the leather jacket.”
Sometimes his leather jackets have collars, sometimes they look more like motorcycle jackets; sometimes there are many zippers involved, sometimes not. But the coats are always black. He’s been wearing them for at least 20 years, a spokesman said. The thing is, he always looks the same.
There has not yet been a widely recognizable face of AI. ChatGPT and Bard are anonymous brains. That’s part of what makes AI so creepy: its disembodied nature. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is ubiquitous, but looks rather generic. Mr. Huang and his leather jacket are ready to step neatly into that gap.
The coat is an object that has become a signifier – of a person, but also of the great leap forward that person represents. And that association puts Mr. Huang in the same club as Steve “black turtleneck” Jobs, Mark “gray T-shirt” Zuckerberg, and Jeff “Pitbull” Bezos as a CEO who understands that the difference between a company achieving world-changing success and a company that is a world-changing success that becomes part of pop culture can be the image of its figurehead. One that is just enough caricature to work in the public imagination and become the avatar of a movement.
“It makes a person instantly recognizable, kind of like a cartoon character or superhero,” says Richard Thompson Ford, the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History” and a professor at Stanford Law School. It signals “a down-to-earth rejection of fashion artifice, while still harnessing the power of fashion.”
Not that those involved would say exactly that.
Power Uniforms (or the Power of Uniforms)
When asked why they wear the same thing day in and day out, most of the powerful people willing to answer the question say it saves time, allowing them to think about whatever pressing issue they have, not what they’re going to wear it. day.
This is what Barack Obama said, who wore only gray or dark blue suits as president, except for that one unfortunate moment in a brown suit, just like Mr. Zuckerberg. According to the spokesman for Mr. Huang, “he has said before that he dresses in the same style of black pants and shirt because it makes for one less set of decisions to make every day.” (Mr. Huang himself took “a break from speaking to the media,” the spokesman said.)
That is undoubtedly true. Wearing the same uniform every day also conveys discipline (no fashion here), focus and, Mr. Ford, “reliability” – all qualities that are desirable for any CEO.
But to think that this is all there is to it is to miss part of the picture. Anyone with aspirations for world domination, especially in the age of visual communication, would know enough about history to know that.
After all, wearing the same thing every day is a shortcut to creating a Pavlovian identity in the beehive spirit — not just in Silicon Valley, but in virtually every arena. For example, when you think of magazine editors, who do you think of? Anna Wintour, with her severe bob and dark glasses. Are you thinking of the Supreme Court? Black robes (and maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s lace collar).
History is littered with figures who understood the power of a consistent visual signature – so much so that clothing styles were often named after them. Nelson Mandela had the Madiba shirt; Narendra Modi, the Modi Kurta; Jawaharlal Nehru, the Nehru jacket. These associations become impossible to forget, deeply embedded in our cerebral cortex, forming assumptions and opinions. See Elizabeth Holmes and her black turtleneck, which, with its direct link to Steve Jobs, implied genius to the watching world whether we were aware of it or not.
And when it comes to cultural associations, there are few pieces of clothing as rich in adjectives as a black leather jacket. In fact, it is a ready-made personality – as Mr. Huang is clearly aware.
According to one observerWhen the Nvidia chief walked around Computex in Taipei in his leather jacket last month, he was asked how he could handle the heat. (The temperature on the day of his keynote was between 79 and 90 degrees.)
“I am always cool,” Mr. Huang replied.
The man in black
The black leather jacket “connects 1950s Hollywood to a sense of independence, the open road, rebellion, and sex appeal,” says Joseph Rosenfeld, an image consultant and stylist in Silicon Valley.
It’s Marlon Brando’s uniform in “The Wild One” and almost everywhere in James Dean’s photos. Of the Beats and the Beatles; Elvis and David Bowie (in his Berlin period). It’s the opposite of what we think of when we think of a tech geek, which is why it was so smart that Mr. Huang chose it as his uniform. It falls on. It triggers a reassessment.
Especially on a 60-year-old man like Mr. Huang. Imagine “if Huang wore a suit or even a polo shirt and khakis,” Mr. Ford said. “He would look like a boring, conventional middle manager.” Instead, he said, “the leather jacket indicates that he is a creative type and a person of high status who can wear whatever he wants.”
When I asked ChatGPT, “Why does Jensen Huang always wear the same black leather jacket?” it responded with four options, including suggesting that “Leather jackets, especially black ones, are often associated with a sense of confidence, authority, and professionalism.” Also motorcycles, which are about speed.
The jacket also ties into a foundational myth of Silicon Valley and Mr. Jobs, the man who was the antithesis of the men in gray suits at IBM, and “almost a spiritual leader to some,” as Mr. Ford put it. Someone, he said, “representing a kind of golden age, when anything seemed possible and people still thought technology would be a positive force in the world”—a particularly striking reminder at a time when the public conversation revolves partly around the potential threat from AI
And the jacket strategy is right. According to Mr. Rosenfeld, “Customers have asked me about the leather jacket and want to know if they can wear the same.” (He said he told them Mr. Huang already owned the look and advised they develop another signature.)
For those who want to know what brand Mr. Huang is wearing, his spokesman said he didn’t know. Unlike Mr. Jobs, who owned many versions of the same Issey Miyake turtleneck (or Mr. Zuckerberg, who wears Brunello Cucinelli T-shirts), Mr. Huang seems to vary his jackets. But Mr Rosenfeld surmised that ‘they don’t seem to be of Tom Ford’s level, which we know he can afford. At least some I’ve seen seem to be theoretical.
However, for those who want to see the look, at least seven different e-tailers are currently offering “Jensen Huang Leather Jackets” at prices ranging from $109 (Jacketpop) to $149.99 (the real leather).
To put this in context, Superstar Jacket sells two versions of a “Jensen Huang Leather Jacket,” in addition to a “Fast & Furious 10 Vin Diesel Jacket,” a “Snoop Dogg Leather Jacket,” and an “Indiana Jones Leather Jacket.” jack’.
But Mr. Huang is the only CEO who has a jacket named after him.
