The point of this article isn't the damned turtleneck -- the lesson to learn is that Jobs was best friends with Issey Miyake. Think about that for a minute: How many other folks who work in tech in the valley have any friends who even work in fashion design? Add to that that this is the same guy who hired Paul Rand the grandfather of American graphic design to come up with the logo for NeXT. This is also the same man who hired I. M. Pei as an architect and powered the team that made the first computer animated motion picture. You can start to see why none of his peers even come close...
Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
11–20 of 151 posts
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#12"...its ability to convey a signature style..." This is important yet overlooked! There is a lot of advice for up and coming founders on HN (and other places) ranging from scalability minutiae to naming your company, which are all important of course, but there is very little advice on how to dress to create a personal signature style. Why hasn't a site that aims to do this hackers/startup founders crop up, with advi…
Sam Altman's two layers of polos and popped collars at Macworld was certainly a "distinctive" look!
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#13Many articles have been written lately about how an outsider drop-out like Jobs would have never been given an opportunity to succeed in East Asia. So it's interesting that here we have a story about how Steve Jobs tried to introduce a company uniform at Apple that emulated Sony. Especially odd given the "think different" slogan of the era. In any case, I love the idea of a personal brand that doesn't change -- and a…
I actually tried this my freshman year of college: wardrobe of nearly identical shirts, pants and sweaters. I was actually inspired by the idea that whenever cartoon characters opened their closets you'd see it full of just their signature outfit. I didn't use the term 'personal brand' but I had the idea, and also loved the convenience.
Turns out that if you're not Steve Jobs this doesn't work so well. After I had ended the this phase I received a lot of comments from people assuming I just never changed clothes, or at the very least found it to be unpleasantly eccentric behavior. I'm pretty sure that if your true goal is a personal brand, unless you're already a very public figure, you don't want to go this route ;)
On the other hand if you aren't interested in personal brand, or are already branded as eccentric this does make clothes shopping and choosing an outfit much easier.
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#14"...its ability to convey a signature style..." This is important yet overlooked! There is a lot of advice for up and coming founders on HN (and other places) ranging from scalability minutiae to naming your company, which are all important of course, but there is very little advice on how to dress to create a personal signature style. Why hasn't a site that aims to do this hackers/startup founders crop up, with advi…
It's funny that it really, horribly clashes with the idea of "Think Different", though.
Not really - he did indeed Think Different by doing exactly what most other CEO's (then and now) did not, imho.
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#15“I have enough to last for the rest of my life.”
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#16"...its ability to convey a signature style..." This is important yet overlooked! There is a lot of advice for up and coming founders on HN (and other places) ranging from scalability minutiae to naming your company, which are all important of course, but there is very little advice on how to dress to create a personal signature style. Why hasn't a site that aims to do this hackers/startup founders crop up, with advi…
It's funny that it really, horribly clashes with the idea of "Think Different", though.
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Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#17Many articles have been written lately about how an outsider drop-out like Jobs would have never been given an opportunity to succeed in East Asia. So it's interesting that here we have a story about how Steve Jobs tried to introduce a company uniform at Apple that emulated Sony. Especially odd given the "think different" slogan of the era. In any case, I love the idea of a personal brand that doesn't change -- and a…
I own the same button up Dickies shirt (15 or so) in various different colors. I own a similar number of colored T shirts to go under my button up shirts... With these I wear one of my 3 pairs of pants( 1 jean, 1 khaki cargo pant, 1 khaki cargo short). This takes care of all of my needs.
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#18"...its ability to convey a signature style..." This is important yet overlooked! There is a lot of advice for up and coming founders on HN (and other places) ranging from scalability minutiae to naming your company, which are all important of course, but there is very little advice on how to dress to create a personal signature style. Why hasn't a site that aims to do this hackers/startup founders crop up, with advi…
I think the typical young tech founder signature style is sandals or flip-flops, shorts and an assortment of stupid/funny t-shirts.
Sweaters are deprecated.
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#19I always figured he was inspired by Tom Wolfe, who always wore a white suit in public. Wolfe emerged in the sixties and wrote novels about the counter culture movement. Job's references to things like 'the whole earth catalog' and other 60s icons always seem to point to his style.
Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform
#20Many articles have been written lately about how an outsider drop-out like Jobs would have never been given an opportunity to succeed in East Asia. So it's interesting that here we have a story about how Steve Jobs tried to introduce a company uniform at Apple that emulated Sony. Especially odd given the "think different" slogan of the era. In any case, I love the idea of a personal brand that doesn't change -- and a…
I actually tried this my freshman year of college: wardrobe of nearly identical shirts, pants and sweaters. I was actually inspired by the idea that whenever cartoon characters opened their closets you'd see it full of just their signature outfit. I didn't use the term 'personal brand' but I had the idea, and also loved the convenience. Turns out that if you're not Steve Jobs this doesn't work so well. After I had en…
On a more practical note but along a related thread, a couple of years ago I threw out all of my socks and bought a stack of the exact same plain black socks. Now I never have to worry about matching socks, when a hole appears I just throw that sock out, when I'm getting low on socks I throw out the lot and buy them new.