Marlon Brando cool to Jensen Huang joke: how the black leather jacket became a meme

Once the ultimate symbol of Hollywood rebellion, the former Nvidia chief’s signature look is now being mocked as a midlife crisis cliche

For nearly two decades a black leather jacket has been a key part of Jensen Huang’s look. Now it’s become a punchline.

As the founder and chief executive of Nvidia resigned this week after reports of multiple affairs, his affinity for a leather jacket, an item of clothing typically associated with a man in midlife crisis mode, has become widely mocked.

The Cut ran a story suggesting a clear line between his penchant for a luxury leather jacket and his extramarital affairs. “Jensen Huang’s leather jackets confessed before he did” read the headline. Writing in the New York Times, the author Anand Giridharadas asked “is an expensive leather jacket on a middle-aged man the new symbol of a honeypot victim?”

Meanwhile, the internet is rife with memes, including an AI-generated image of a leather jacket flying at half mast outside Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. There was also another fake image, this time of Huang in a studded leather jacket, that many people believed was real.

Elsewhere, there are plenty of divorced dad jokes doing the rounds. “Jensen leather jacket discourse reminds me of the time two years ago when I wore my beloved moto jacket to a party and my good friend said “great jacket, sorry you got divorced”,” wrote one user on X.

Similar to Steve Jobs’s black rollneck and jeans or Mark Zuckerberg’s Latin-sloganed T-shirts, Huang’s black leather jacket has become a visual trademark. He likes to pair a leather jacket (always black) with a black T-shirt and black jeans.

In September, in an interview with CBS, Huang explained he had 30 to 40 leather jackets. He credited his wife, Lori Huang, with choosing them. They vary from motorcycle-inspired jackets with a tighter fit and plenty of zips to collarless croc-embossed jackets and clean-cut tailored versions. He has worn them to trade shows, to parties and to give keynote speeches at developer conferences. In 2021 he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in a black leather jacket from Tom Ford. In July, another Tom Ford jacket worn and signed by Huang sold at a charity auction at Sotheby’s for $960,000, more than 10 times its original price.

“The leather jacket is Huang’s way of borrowing some cool,” says Peter Bevan, a writer and stylist. Bevan points to the leather jacket’s “rebel history” as part of the appeal.

Marlon Brando led his biker gang wearing an asymmetric zip jacket in 1953’s The Wild One; James Dean zipped around off-screen in a similar style while following his Berlin era; David Bowie wore a black leather jacket on the cover of his Heroes album in 1977. Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, John Travolta in Grease and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones also made a leather jacket an enduring symbol of Hollywood style.

By choosing a black leather jacket rather than a corporate suit, it suggests that Huang is unconventional, a leader rather than a conformist.

“It’s basically Huang saying: “I’m not a regular billionaire boss, I’m a cool billionaire boss”,” Bevan says.

When asked by CBS in October why he wore a leather jacket day in, and day out, Huang said it helped him avoid decision fatigue. “Black is the absence of choice,” he said. “It’s nice to wear the same thing every day because no surprises. For everybody else, they probably have to make three or four decisions. I took that off my plate. The moment I wake up, I could be thinking about important things.”

It’s a look that has not gone unnoticed by his fellow tech giants. In 2024, Zuckerberg posted a photo of Huang swapping jackets. Later in the year, at a Siggraph conference in Colorado, Zuckerberg presented him with another jacket. “It’s black and leather and shearling,” Zuckerberg said describing the coat. “It’s a vibe. I mean, get this guy a chain.” In return, Huang gave him the black leather jacket he was wearing, explaining that Lori had bought it for him to commemorate that year’s conference. “This is worth more because it’s used,” Zuckerberg said as he slipped it on.

Bevan says that while Huang’s choice of designer jackets are “the kind that most fashion insiders would rate”, a box-fresh leather jacket “feels try hard” and as a result, “tips into midlife crisis territory fast”.

The biggest mistake men make when buying a leather jacket Bevan says is choosing one that is “too shiny, too new and too tight.”

The list of those who get it wrong is long – including Jeremy Clarkson, who likes to wear a black leather jacket with bootcut jeans.

For Bevan, the men who have mastered a leather jacket are those who “look like they’ve owned it for ever”.

Lenny Kravitz who, like Huang, is in his sixties, prefers a battered leather jacket. John Malkovich, who is a decade older, likes a brown oversized leather jacket, while the rapper A$AP Rocky, who is in his thirties, has made a bomber leather jacket his style staple.

For those without youth or “rock-star DNA” on their side, Bevan suggests ditching a leather jacket for a cotton Harrington style that he describes as “having the same cool but none of the leather-clad midlife baggage”.

As for Huang, he may have to reconsider his default wardrobe for next week. While he managed to pull off a leather jacket at tech conferences, it may be harder to pull off at a congressional testimony.