Steve Jobs’s black turtlenecks helped make him the world’s most recognizable CEO. But the Apple co-founder wouldn’t have worn them if his employees had accepted the nylon jacket he proposed as a corporate uniform instead. Before he died, Jobs himself explained his sartorial signature to biographer Walter Isaacson, in an interview published for the first time below.
Today, Jobs’ fashion choices look downright visionary. Acclaimed designer Ralph Rucci has called 501 jeans and black turtlenecks like Jobs’s two of the three most “wholly original” pieces of clothing in modern fashion. Sales of Jobs style turtlenecks spiked in the days following his death last week.
But before he was a cultural icon parodied on Saturday Night Live, imitated in TV commercials, and celebrated in a national theatrical production, Jobs was regarded as a corporate oddball, even within his own company. According to Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs, due out in two weeks, Apple employees jeered their boss’s scheme for a corporate outfit. So he had to settle for a personal uniform, modeled on shirts he saw noted designer Issey Miyake wearing.
