A simple and fun exercise, to get down to business: open Google, type the name of Jensen Huang, the well-known CEO of Nvidia, and see the results in the images tab. Give it time, without rushing. Move your cursor up and down and take a good look at each and every one of the photos that are included in the list. Is there something that catches your attention? Exact! In nearly all of them, Huang sports the same look, one with a common element beyond his glasses, shaved chin, and hair parted to the side or swept back: his black leather jacket.
And that “almost” responds to a handful of exceptions, very limited, in which the businessman usually wears a dark polo shirt. In the vast majority of cases, the cameras have always captured him stuffed into one of his black leather jackets, often with a biker aesthetic, with silver zippers, a mandarin collar and shoulder pads.
It might seem like a coincidence, random things, but the truth is that the frequency of his appearances with the everlasting leather garment suggests that the reason is another, less related to chance and much more deliberate: the attempt to create your own personal brand, a particularly visual one, with a well-identifiable aesthetic that reinforces your status as an entrepreneur.
A modern “look”… and that marks status
Of fortuitous or improvised seems to have little.
As Quartz collects, at least since 2013 The most common thing when Huang is seen in public is that he does so stuffed into one of his black jackets. And that applies to all kinds of public events, be it corporate events, a presentation or even an interview with journalists. And to show a button, or if necessary a zipper: that’s how he posed for the cover of Time in 2021 and the pages of Fortune in 2017, that’s how the Financial Times showed him not long ago and that’s how he also looks on the Forbes list, which incidentally assigns him a heritage of 35.2 billion dollars, which places him in 76th place on his list of billionaires.
And they are not the only examples.
Perhaps the most eloquent of all is that if you access the Nvidia corporate website, one of the first images you will find is that of Huang wearing a black jacket. It will happen to you even if you enter the website in Spanish, French or the one destined for the US market. With a black jacket, he has been represented in all kinds of cartoons or amazing hyper-realistic deepfakes created by Nvidia itself. There have even been those who prominent in networks let the tycoon come to formal dinners Just like I would go for a walk, with a polo shirt and… exactly: black jacket.
As Nvidia garnered more and more attention driven by the winds of artificial intelligence (AI), technology that has just made its way into the tiny and exclusive club of companies valued at more than a trillion dollars and has grown fat from In extraordinary ways Huang’s own personal heritage, his attempt to create a bespoke visual brand for himself has gained prominence. There are already those who sell suckers with the advertising hook of the tycoon and even on Reddit there is speculation about where do you buy his clothes the CEO of Nvidia.
Huang, of course, is not the first tech entrepreneur to launch into creating a clearly identifiable visual brand. The paradigmatic case is probably that of Steve Jobs and his also everlasting dark turtleneck sweaters, with which he was already posing in 1976 and with which he could still be seen at the end of 2010. His look was completed by blue jeans and New Balance sneakers. His biographer Walter Isaacson says that Jobs went so far as to order 100 of the famous turtlenecks so he wouldn’t have to think about what to wear every day.
Again, it is not the only case in the sector. The co-founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta, Marck Zuckerberg, has also taken the revelation of the looks minimalist, with tight-fitting, single-color t-shirts and sweaters. The same goes for the disgraced Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, who during her most popular days also used to wear a black sweater, even with a turtleneck. She thus posed for the covers of media of the reach of Forbes, Fortune, Inc Magazine or The New York Times Style.
Not everyone opts for that strategy. Other leaders in the sector, such as Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who has been seen wearing a suit, a basic shirt, a jacket or even disguised as a warrioralso follow certain own guidelines, but the bet is more diffuse.
The million dollar question at this point is… Because? What has been and is the objective of Huang, Jobs or, perhaps in a less obvious way, Zuckerberg and in his day Holmes, by always following the same clothing pattern? Why do they always repeat the same clothes? The key is to establish a personal brand, one that clearly identifies them, defines them and, beyond the message conveyed by each look —sobriety, rebelliousness, modernity, etc.— sets them apart from the rest of their colleagues and competitors.
After all, not many CEOs, no matter how influential, wealthy and powerful they may be, can run for office. an important business dinner in a sweater or a jacket and sit at a table surrounded by tycoons in suits, shirts and ties.
That is only within reach of figures like Jobs or Huang, billionaires capable of creating their own dress code that further reinforces their power and status. After all, they can. In other leaders it would be difficult to imagine.
Images: Nvidia
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