Why tech CEOs love black leather jackets

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":5.68,"text":"These days, it is hard to imagine a more powerful and divisive place than Silicon Valley. As tech industry leaders have morphed into mighty capitalist enterprises over the past decade, so have the images of their CEOs. Many have recast themselves into swaggering style icons — at least in their own imagination."}],[{"start":25.002,"text":"As is often the case with someone trying on a new image, shortcuts are taken, often in the form of a black leather jacket. Today, they are most synonymous with Jensen Huang, who resigned as chief executive of Nvidia this week after a major image crisis relating to his extramarital affairs, including with an executive alleged to be a Chinese spy. But they are also regularly worn by billionaires including Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, among others."}],[{"start":55.828,"text":"In light of the society-upending potential of AI, energy-hoovering data centres and effects of social media on mental health, the stylistic choices of tech CEOs may not rank high on a list of why they deserve intense scrutiny. And yet, there is more at play here than wincing at the spectacle of unfathomably wealthy middle-aged men cosplaying cool. It has to do with the tension between monetary capital and cultural cachet, which have often stood in opposition but have increasingly converged, erasing countercultural space in the process."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":87.076,"text":"For much of civilisation, social status came from money. This became especially apparent after the bourgeois revolutions in England and France diminished the aristocracy’s birthright status. In his 1899 study of bourgeois consumer culture, The Theory of the Leisure Class, the economist Thorstein Veblen highlighted how the display of monetary status drove consumption. Fast forward to the late 1940s, and a new form of social capital — based on culture and not money — emerged with the rise of youth culture. This capital could be summarised in one word — cool. The essence of cool was its opposition to the purely pecuniary forces that shape our society, as well as the conservative forces that govern our politics."}],[{"start":129.124,"text":"The first youth subcultures arose partly due to the dissatisfaction with the western societal order that plunged itself into two world wars. These subcultures carved out space for cultural dissent, and clothes became its outward symbols, few of which were as potent as a black leather jacket."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":146.234,"text":"The Perfecto — commonly known as the motorcycle or rider jacket — was created by the American company Schott in 1928. It served the nascent motorcycle riding culture and took advantage of a recent invention — the zipper. Irving Schott, the Russian-Jewish immigrant who founded the company, placed the zipper off to the side and at a slight angle, so it would not cut into a rider’s body bent over the motorcycle frame and would protect him from the wind. As motorcycle culture began to develop an outlaw image after the second world war (England’s equivalent to American bikers were called “rockers”), epitomised by figures such as Marlon Brando and James Dean, the Perfecto was adopted by rock and punk musicians, and by gay S&M culture, cementing its rebellious credentials. The somewhat menacing profile that black leather evoked carried through from the Black Panthers to edgy intellectuals such as Michel Foucault."}],[{"start":199.321,"text":"“It was a very dissident, subcultural look, as well as one that was very masculine, and then it became a cool thing that outsiders would wear,” says Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at FIT and fashion historian."}],[{"start":211.723,"text":"As youth culture grew more influential, its trappings turned into a vast consumer market. By the 1990s, the label “rock star” pivoted from a reflection of a rebellious countercultural icon into a shorthand corporate compliment. It seemed like everyone wanted to be a rock star, not least the CEOs of big corporations, while nonconformity turned into an advertising theme and a personal brand."}],[{"start":235.206,"text":"“Our businessmen imagine themselves rebels, and our rebels sound more and more like ideologists of business,” lamented the cultural critic Thomas Frank in his 1994 essay, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent”, describing the corporate mythology of the day that encouraged rule-breaking and talked up a managerial “revolution”."}],[{"start":255.2,"text":"Today’s best-known tech CEOs, some of whom were already working in the 1990s, have imbibed this corporate rebel lore, moulding themselves in a nonconformist image in which rebelliousness became a business leadership strategy. Given that clothing serves as an outward representation of the self, it is unsurprising that such thinking would eventually take a sartorial turn in Silicon Valley, even among “anti-fashion conscious” coding types."}],[{"start":278.937,"text":"“The main thing driving their style is still the (likely subconscious) need to separate themselves from how CEOs in other industries dress,” says W David Marx, the author of Status and Culture. The key forebear here is Apple’s Steve Jobs. Although he stopped short of wearing leather, his black turtlenecks by the avant-garde Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake pointedly signalled Apple’s own “rebelliousness”, set squarely against the buttoned-up, slacks-wearing Bill Gates, the sartorial symbol of the stodgy Microsoft."}],[{"start":311.84,"text":"One of Apple’s most successful early ads, aired during the 1984 Super Bowl, depicted an Orwellian scenario in which Big Brother (presumably, IBM computers) turned people into drones, and called upon the consumer to rebel against this tyranny by buying the soon-to-be-launched Macintosh computers."}],[{"start":331.025,"text":"After Apple’s overwhelming success, it wasn’t hard to move fast and break things — even if there was a prolonged period where hoodies, khaki trousers and Allbirds sneakers dominated; a bland and homogeneous uniform to stave off decision fatigue for when one’s main focus was rewiring the world as we know it."}],[{"start":350.988,"text":"But then there was Mark Zuckerberg of Meta undergoing a transformation from a hoodie-wearing nerd to a cooler-than-thou jock right as his company stepped up its wearables efforts, sporting labels such as Amiri and Loewe. Zuckerberg famously swapped leather jackets with Nvidia’s Huang on stage at a 2024 tech conference in Colorado, while Dorsey’s penchant for Rick Owens leather jackets has become a genre of online fashion commentary. Musk owns several leather jackets (a repeat favourite from Belstaff has a shearling collar). And Huang, who rarely publicly wears anything else, has a penchant for Tom Ford (a 2023 style from the brand owned by Huang was sold in a Sotheby’s auction this summer for almost $1mn), though he has attributed most of his style choices to his wife and daughter. Predictably, the media routinely describes these CEOs as having “rock star status”."}],[{"start":407.76,"text":"“Leather in menswear is often used to telegraph strength and rebellion, which many people — not just tech elites — desire to project,” says Derek Guy, the popular menswear critic."}],[{"start":417.295,"text":"But tech CEOs are not rebellious. There is no revolution to be found in a Tesla, subversion on Instagram or nonconformity in Nvidia’s chips. Ultimately, the job of the tech CEOs is the same as that of the heads of Home Depot and Boeing: to make as much money as possible for shareholders. The only difference is that they want to look cool while doing it. In their chase for cultural validation, however, which they hope to add to their financial status like a hunting trophy, they forget the fundamental rule of coolness — it is bestowed by others."}],[{"start":449.207,"text":"“All fashion victims think ‘I’m wearing this, and that proves I’m accumulating all of the charisma that was associated with that’. But it’s other people who ultimately determine how they’re going to read it,” says Steele."}],[{"start":460.781,"text":"What’s more, the tech moguls’ posturing goes further than evoking a feeling of slight embarrassment at watching your dad go through a midlife crisis. It raises deeper cultural questions. A thriving society needs space for cultural opposition, and clothing plays a part in its expression. In co-opting not just the countercultural attitude but its fashion symbols, the most powerful people on Earth today are erasing this space, a development we may come to regret."}],[{"start":486.851,"text":"Eugene Rabkin is the author of ‘Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism’"}],[{"start":490.831,"text":"Follow us on Instagram and sign up for Fashion Matters, your weekly newsletter about the fashion industry"}],[{"start":499.2,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1794582297_4013.mp3"}