Jensen Huang’s leather jacket comes back to bite him
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Just about every profile of Jensen Huang in the past decade mentions his jackets.
PHOTO: AFP
Jacob Gallagher
- Jensen Huang’s leather jacket has long shaped his public image as a Silicon Valley rebel and helped brand him as a bold, distinctive tech leader.
- An AI-made photo of Huang in a studded Saint Laurent jacket spread online, but Nvidia confirmed it was doctored.
- As reports of his affairs emerged, the jacket image shifted from stylish defiance to a symbol of recklessness and damaged reputation.
AI generated
Just before Jensen Huang resigned on Nov 12 from Nvidia, the Silicon Valley chip juggernaut he founded three decades ago, an uncanny photo of him made the internet rounds: Huang, in what appeared to be a haute-punk Saint Laurent jacket.
It wasn’t strange to see Huang in a leather jacket. After all, rare is the public appearance where Huang doesn’t wear one. He wore one on the cover of Time in 2021 and at Nvidia’s keynote in March. In a 2016 Reddit AMA, he described himself as “the guy in the leather jacket”. (A flat descriptor that sounds as if it could be applied to a video game avatar or a cartoon character.)