There’s a new tech titan in town, and he’s preparing to enter the Pantheon. How can we know?
Well, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang runs the company. He co-founded his Nvidia in 1993, which currently has a market capitalization of around $950 billion, but briefly peaked at the end of May. trillion dollar clubApple, Alphabet and Amazon.
He has as a product the life of AI development, ChatGPT and Bard, a data processing chip that is key to the current paradigm shift.
And he has the looks. He always wears a black leather jacket when he appears in public, and most of the time he wears a black T-shirt and black jeans.
Huang wore a black leather jacket when he attended. thyme cover Chosen as one of the 2021 Men of the Year. It’s his jacket in black leather during his keynotes at multiple GTC developer conferences since 2018. For his 2023 World ITF keynote and his 2023 talk at his Computex 2023 keynote. he made himself clear. Reddit AMA In 2016, as “a man wearing a leather jacket”.
His leather jacket may have a collar, or it may look like a motorcycle jacket. Sometimes it involves a lot of zips, sometimes it doesn’t. But the jacket is always black. A spokesperson said he’s been wearing them for “at least 20 years.” The point is that he always looks the same.
There is no commonly recognized AI face yet. ChatGPT and Bard are anonymous brains. He’s one of the reasons it makes AI so creepy, its incorporeal nature. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is ubiquitous, yet somewhat mundane. Mr. Huang and his leather jacket are ready to step right into that gap.
A jacket not only symbolizes a person, but also a giant leap for that person. And with that association, Mr. Huang has named Steve “black turtleneck” Jobs, Mark “grey t-shirt” Zuckerberg, and Jeff “Jeff” as chief executives who understand global corporate differences. It puts you in the same position as “Pitbull” Bezos. Successful companies that change and become part of pop culture, successful companies that change the world may be the epitome of that. Caricatures are enough to enter the public imagination and become the personification of the movement.
Richard Thompson Ford, Stanford Law School professor and author of “Dress Codes: The Laws of Fashion Make History,” says, “It’s about making a person instantly recognizable, like a cartoon character or a superhero.” will be,” he says. It represents a “realistic rejection of fashionable technology while harnessing the power of fashion.”
That’s not exactly what those involved say.
Power Uniform (or Uniform Power)
When asked why they wear the same clothes every day, most of the influential people who actively tackle the question say that it saves them time and allows them to think about the immediate problem at hand rather than what to wear. I answer that I can. Day.
what are these barack obamaAs president, he wore only gray or dark blue suits, An unfortunate tanning suit momentsaid the same as Mr. Zuckerberg. A spokesperson for Mr. Huang said: “He used to say that the reason he wears the same style of black pants and shirt is because he has one less decision to make each day.” (Hwang himself “had taken a break from speaking to the media,” a spokesperson said.)
It’s definitely true. Wearing the same uniform every day conveys discipline (here, not trendy), focus and, according to Ford, “credibility,” all desirable qualities for a chief executive. Stated.
But to think this is all is missing part of the picture. Anyone who aspires to conquer the world, especially in the age of visual communication, will know enough history to know it.
After all, not just in Silicon Valley, but almost everywhere, wearing the same thing every day is a shortcut to creating a Pavlovian identity in the collective mind. For example, when you think of a magazine editor, who comes to mind? Anna Wintour with a heavy bob and black-rimmed glasses. What do you mean by supreme court? A black robe (and possibly a Ruth Bader Ginsburg lace collar).
History is full of figures who understood the power of consistent visual characteristics. Their clothing style was often named after them.Nelson Mandela is Madiba shirt; Narendra Modi modi kurta; Jawaharlal Nehru nehru jacket. These associations become unforgettable and become embedded deep in our cerebral cortex, forming assumptions and opinions. See Elizabeth Holmes and her black turtleneck. A direct connection to Steve Jobs implies a brilliance to the world we see, whether we are aware of it or not.
And when it comes to cultural bodies, few garments have as many adjectives as a black leather jacket. As Mr. Huang clearly recognizes, it is in effect a ready-made persona.
according to 1 observerLast month, as I walked around Computex in Taipei in a leather jacket, an Nvidia head asked me how I could survive the heat. ( temperature The temperature on the day of his keynote was between 79 and 90 degrees. )
“I am always calm,” Huang replied.
man in black
The black leather jacket “associates 1950s Hollywood with independence, openness, rebellion and sex appeal,” says Joseph Rosenfeld, an image consultant and stylist in Silicon Valley.
It’s the uniform of Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. About Beats and Beatles. Elvis and David Bowie (Berlin era). It’s the exact opposite of what we think of when we think of technology geeks, which is why Huang chose it as his uniform so smartly. It stands out. This will trigger a re-evaluation.
Especially for a 60-year-old man like Mr. Huang. “Imagine fans wearing suits, or polo shirts and khakis,” Ford said. “He’s going to look like a boring, run-of-the-mill middle manager.” Instead, the leather jacket “shows he’s a creative type and a high-status person who can wear whatever he wants.” ‘ he said.
When I asked ChatGPT, “Why does Jensen Huang always wear the same black leather jacket?” it reacted There are four options, including the suggestion that “leather jackets, especially black ones, are often associated with a sense of confidence, authority and professionalism.” There are also bikes that emphasize speed.
The jacket was the antithesis of Silicon Valley’s founding myths and IBM’s gray-suited men, who, as Ford put it, were “almost a spiritual leader for some.” Associated with Jobs. He said he “represented a kind of golden age, when everything seemed possible and people still believed technology could be a force for good in the world.” This is a particularly prominent reminder at a time when public conversation is partially centered on: Potential Threats of AI
The jacket strategy has also been further strengthened. “We had a customer asking about a leather jacket and they wanted to know if we could wear the same thing,” Rosenfeld said. (He said Mr. Huang already owned the design and advised him to develop another signature.)
For those curious about what brands Huang wears, his spokesperson said he didn’t know. Unlike Mr. Jobs, who owned multiple versions of the same Issey Miyake turtleneck (or Mr. Zuckerberg, who wears a Brunello Cucinelli T-shirt), Huang seems to be changing his jacket. But Rosenfeld speculated:at least that’s what some of the ones i’ve seen look like hypothesis“
However, for those who want to know what it looks like, at least seven different retailers now sell the “Jensen Fan Leather Jacket” with prices starting at $109 (jacket pop) to $149.99 (tons)Genuine Leather).
Putting this in context, superstar jacket We sell two versions ofJensen Huang leather jacket‘, ‘Fast and Furious 10 Vin Diesel Jacket’, ‘Snoop Dogg Leather Jacket’ and ‘Indiana Jones Leather Jacket’.
But Huang is the only CEO to wear a jacket named after him.
