It’s probably not a coincidence that some of the most famous tech company CEOs have instantly recognizable looks. Steve Jobs’s black turtleneck and blue jeans. Palmer Lucky’s Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. Mark Zuckerberg’s wedgieable jeans and t-shirt era followed by his current hypebeast transformation. Much like infamous dictators throughout history, the leaders’ style at some of the most powerful organizations in the world today lends itself and benefits from a cult of personality and iconography.
At this very moment, no company is more powerful and no tech leader fashion item is more iconic than Nvidia CEO’s Jensen Huang’s leather jacket, which he has been wearing for keynotes and media interviews for years. As his and Nvidia’s status grew in the tech industry, Huang has leaned into the signature look. For example, he recently promoted robotics company 1X Technologies by accepting a new leather jacket bedazzled with Nvidia’s stock ticker from one of its robots.
The company’s chips are in high demand, but judging by the sheer number of online retailers who are trying to steal and sell Huang’s look, it appears that his leather jacket is as well.
To name just a few examples, a site called Victoria Jacket sells a $97 “Jensen Huang Black Leather Jacket.” Wilson Jackets sells a $92 “Jensen Huang Nvidia CEO Leather Jacket.” Paragon Jackets sells a $94 (down from $209!) “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Leather Jacket.” Movie Jackets sells a $99-$129 “Jensen Huang Black Leather Jacket.”
“BE THE BOSS OF THE FASHION WORLD,” a product description for the jacket on hitjacket.com says. “Even if you don’t have the idea you need something for the working girl style. That is why we are bringing you the working girl staples with a twist. You probably need this kind of Jensen Huang Black Leather Jacket that is sure to uplift the persona of any fashionista. It is one of the coolest picks that has been styled by the popular legendary NVIDIA CEO who has shown the fashion followers a real way to take the styling to the next level.”
Overall, we’ve seen 21 different online retailers sell something that claims to be one of Huang’s jackets and all of them used his image to promote them.
If you know anything about fashion and leather jackets then you already know these prices are highly suspect. Jensen’s Tom Ford jackets, for example, can run around $10,000. While the descriptions all say they are made of both “real leather” and “faux leather,” it’s more likely to be almost entirely the latter. Additionally, $100 today barely gets you a hoodie at J. Crew, so whatever you’ll get in the mail if you order one of these is bound to be low quality.
“I have never heard of those brands. I suspect they’re all scam sites or one of the many places using workshops in low-wage countries to do rip-off versions of something in a photo,” Derek Guy, a fashion industry writer also known as “the menswear guy” on X, told me in an email. “The work is often bad but they hope that it’ll be too much trouble for you to file a refund. You see these companies all over ebay nowadays.”
Guy told me that he’s never seen fashion brands try to promote clothing with an image of a CEO, but that it’s typical for these brands to take any photo that is popular, including product images from bigger retailers like Mr. Porter, and claim they can reproduce it. The Instagram pages for one of the sites, Hit Jacket, shows exactly what Guy is talking about. It is a wall of images of celebrities that invites viewers to click the link in bio to buy the clothing they’re wearing in the photographs.
“It’s ludicrous to me to think that someone can make that jacket for under $100,” Guy said.
All the product descriptions I’ve seen for these jackets on different retailers are also identical, suggesting that it’s the same product promoted by different sites. All the sites where the jackets are sold also have very similar layouts and features. They all include business addresses which appear to point to seemingly random places, primarily in the U.S. but at least one address was in China. Some of the addresses I looked up pointed to single family homes, and one address in New York City did not exist. All the sites also featured different phone numbers. I called four of them, which instantly put me on hold with the same holding music.
Nvidia and Huang have entered the public consciousness in the last couple of years because the generative AI boom, powered primarily by Nvidia chips, has briefly made it the most powerful company in the world. Among gamers, who have relied on Nvidia’s GPUs to run the most graphically demanding video games for decades, Huang and his leather jackets are a familiar sight. As you can tell by the images above, there’s not one leather jacket Huang is known for, but they all have a similar look and are stylized the same.
The leather jacket has a dangerous allure. We all think they look cool, but few of us can pull them off. I was surprised to hear that Guy, who’s known for roasting men’s bad fashion choices online, thinks that Huang is doing a good job.
“I think he’s pretty stylish, especially for a tech CEO,” Guy said. “He’s narrowed his look to a Steve Jobs calculus—sticking to the same thing so he doesn’t have to choose a new outfit every morning. But it’s well put together. I don’t know what I would call it, but plenty of people have paired black jeans with black leather jackets, black shirts, and black boots for a chic look. I think he looks good.”
