Sometimes the actions of rude fools cross a line. I don’t believe in capital punishment. No, you shouldn’t actually die for nerd-related crimes, but sometimes some kind of execution should be arranged anyway. You should be taken to some kind of death row. You should force yourself to say your last words. Your crying family members should sob, and you should be lifted into the air by two grave-looking high school football players in varsity jackets, turned upside down, and ritually dunked into a toilet until something inside you dies.
And the first one should be the one who paid almost a million dollars for Jensen Huang’s leather jacket.
It pains me greatly to inform you that, yes, someone paid $960,000 for a Tom Ford leather jacket previously worn by Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang at a Foxconn event in 2023. I guess that probably means this event. The diagonal zippers on Huang’s jacket in that clip match those of the Sotheby’s online listing for the Huang jacket. So yeah, they bought that when they could have bought it. this five bedroom house and he had money left over for a car.
Brahm Wachter, who heads a division at Sotheby’s called “modern collectibles” he told CNBC“The response to this sale exceeded even our highest expectations.” Even Sotheby’s believes this person overpaid.
To be clear, I agree that one of Jensen Huang’s leather jackets is worth preserving, not because they are necessarily linked to anything auspicious, but because they are, at the very least, confusing artifacts of a tragicomic episode in history. Jensen Huang is one of the main characters in the AI story of the 2020s and wears leather jackets in most of his public appearances. His jacket looks nothing like one of Groucho’s cigars, but it does look a little like one of Paul Masson’s bottles by Orson Welles.
Leather jackets are what bikers and the Fonz wear. They are the ones used by spies and jewel thieves in the movies. Along with watches, they are one of the canonical fetish items for Sad men with shopping addictions.. If you’re cool, a leather jacket will amplify it, but if you’re not cool, a leather jacket will amplify it. triple amplifies that.
Huang, who looks like any dad in a midlife crisis, is far from the worst example of an embarrassing guy in a leather jacket. Fortunately, the vibrations do not suggest that anything sexual is happening. He claims his wife and daughter were the ones who decided he should wear these jackets, and that’s kind of cute and helps a little. And it’s true that she seems to have had problems before deciding on this look. He obviously feels uncomfortable in a Oxford Buttonand looks downright terrible in a inside t-shirtbut the black polos suit him very well, short sleeves either long.
But now, someone has anointed Huang’s signature piece as culturally significant by dropping a life-changing amount of money on it, as one would do with a status-symbol bottle of wine or a boring monkey. Huang’s involvement in this is now irrelevant. Someone made that offer and all possibilities as to why are being deflated.
At best, it was some rich irony collector with black pills like Martin Shkreli. Or maybe you were some billionaire’s assistant, sent on an assignment to build a collection of AI products, with a blank check to buy a few things that might be interesting one day, but not worrying too much if any of them lose value. After that, it all gets a lot sadder: the failure of a Gulf oil tycoon trying to get Huang’s attention so he can launch a startup? Any AI true believers planning the National AI Museum? Or, God help us, a Jensen Huang fan? Someone who sneaks into your bedroom tonight with a pair of scissors to try to pick up a lock of hair?
Whoever you are, stay hidden. Don’t show your face in public wearing your new Jensen jacket. There’s only so much I can handle.
