Jensen Huang’s jackets were cool. Now that’s a punchline.

It wasn’t that long ago – maybe a week? – that Jensen Huang’s plethora of leather jackets were considered cool. But after he resigned as CEO of Nvidia following a scandal, his signature look is now the butt of jokes.

Okay, so maybe not everyone considered him cool. After all, he’s a billionaire AI founder in his 60s, which isn’t exactly a cool Keith Richards type. But it was a look – a cool, zesty, fun kind of dad look. Someone even paid almost a million dollars for one of his used Tom Ford jackets at a charity auction recently.

The look of the leather jacket was a good mix of elegance and functionality. It wasn’t the severe utility uniform of Steve Jobs’ turtleneck, although it meant he didn’t have to think seriously about what he was going to wear (he said in interviews that his wife and daughter bought him the jackets and that he didn’t like shopping for himself).

It’s bolder and fashionable than the standard Arcteryx tech vest, but it’s not as thirsty as Mark Zuckerberg with his gold chain and mullet or as garish as Jeff Bezos’ mob chic.

But circumstances have changed.

Huang was allegedly romantically involved with Alice Huang, a business client alleged to be a Chinese spy – which China denies – as well as two Nvidia employees. (He resigned the day after the first employee case was announced on Wednesday, but before the second on Thursday afternoon.)

Now the leather jacket has gone from a cool, quirky affectation to a desperate, excited, energetic divorced-type look.

The Cut wrote that “leather jacket Jensen Huang confessed before he did”:

A $9,000 leather motorcycle is not the outerwear of a man who faithfully returns home to his wife and children after a long day of designing the AI ​​revolution. He’s a man in mid-life crisis with an active Raya profile and a Harley in the garage. If someone had consulted me years ago, I would have said that Huang is clearly someone who drinks wine with his mistress in the middle of the day. (THE Times discovered a photo from 2023 of Jensen appearing to do just that during a lunch in Shanghai with Alice.)

The New York Times wrote that “Jensen Huang betrayed the leather jacket community”:

We wonder: Was Mr. Huang an easy target because of his love of motorcycle-adjacent high-fashion jackets that both say “I don’t care what people think!” and “Do you like the way I look?” Did our – I mean, his – armor make him a target? Is an expensive leather jacket on a middle-aged man the new symbol of a honeypot victim?

Lol indeed.

And on social media, there have been plenty of jokes that the jacket is a blatant sign of an older man ready to commit infidelity.

Is there a lesson to be learned? I guess it’s because having a unique style is great until your career collapses around you and it’s all anyone jokes about online.

At least the $960,000 paid for the used Jensen jacket was donated to charity.