Jensen Huang’s leather jacket has always been more than outerwear. It is the visual equivalent of a corporate logo that happens to have a zipper (quite like Steve Jobs’ inimitable black turtleneck).
For more than a decade, Nvidia's creator has appeared at product launches, developer conferences, and the occasional street-corner bowl of zhajiangmian in the same black silhouette. In July, one of those coats, a pre-owned Tom Ford, went to the hammer at Sotheby’s with a modest estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. Sold for $960,000 following 65 bids. The auction house called it“The Jensen Jacket.”
Sotheby’s connected the garment to “some of the most consequential moments in modern technology” and positioned it as the uniform of a “first believer”—a symbol of genuineness, inventiveness, tenacity, courage and joy. In other words, the jacket was supposed to embody the whole narrative of Nvidia’s ascent. As it happened, fashion collectors were prepared to spend over a million dollars for the right to acquire a piece of that mystique.
Huang himself has always maintained that the narrative is significantly more mundane. In a CBS News interview he delivered the type of reasoning that would have Steve Jobs nodding his head in recognition: “Black is the absence of choice. He just didn't want the bother of choosing his clothing out every morning. He estimated the collection to be between 30 and 40 items. His wife Lori Huang and daughter have always been the main shoppers. In a 2025 New York Times discussion, he said that for over two decades he had been dressing “the same way, more or less, all thanks to my wife and daughter.
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He is not alone in executive uniform tradition. Jobs wore a black turtleneck and slacks. Mark Zuckerberg owned the grey T-shirt. Huang took leather. The difference is that Huang’s version developed a cult following and a secondary market among those who care about outerwear.
And now, that is a bad cult to have been part of. Huang stepped down as Nvidia's CEO amid a controversy involving either espionage or an affair, and the business lost around $550 billion in market value over five days. The internet did what it does: memes exploded, fashion accounts started dressing Huang in coats he never wore. One popular photograph, posted by the account @hidden.ny, showed him in a Hedi Slimane-era Saint Laurent studded leather jacket. It is a true grail item for fashion fanatics. The picture was produced using AI. Huang never wore it.
It's a bit odd that a man who said he wore black so he wouldn't have to bother with clothes made one of the most expensive hand-me-downs in recent auction history. The same clothing is now a punchline, but as one person noted, at least the $960,000 went to charity.
