Steve Jobs: A fashion icon?

Steve Jobs: A fashion icon?

It’s been a few weeks since the passing of one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and visionaries; Steve Jobs. It feels a little weird blogging about him in a non techy way without alluding to any of his genius inventions, the iPods, iPads, iMac and maybe iFashion someday J. This would be really interesting don’t you think….clothes that perhaps have a self washing app and you would never have to do any laundry or an app that once input into an outfit could transform itself to whatever outfit you wanted whatever the occasion (mmmhh, that however would put fashion houses like us out of business), I wonder what we would call such outfits, iTransformers?

So since Steve Jobs passing away, he has become sort of a fashion icon. How do you explain St. Croix’s (the men’s fashion label that claims to have sold Jobs his now infamous turtle necks) selling out their similar styled turtle necks at a crazy price of 175 dollars (approximately Kshs17, 500….yikes!). Waaa, we would be millionaires if we could sell all our outfits for that much. Perhaps it’s time to pursue a partnership with St. Croix *stares into space building castles*. The turtle necks have become so popular that there is now a controversy over who designed and supplied them to Jobs. According to a fashion news website, St. Croix claims that Jobs purchased roughly two dozen turtle necks annually and even occasionally called the label’s owner to tell him how much he liked them. That’s one part of the story. The other is obtained from an upcoming biography of Jobs written by Walter Isaccson. The story goes that Jobs was on a trip to Japan in the early 1980s and while there he asked Sony’s Chairman why everyone in the company wore uniforms. The chairman responded by saying that after the war, no one had any clothes and the company had to give their workers something to wear each day. This was functional and it also served as a way to bond workers to the company. Jobs loved the idea and decided he wanted the same for Apple. He called Issey Miyake who has designed uniforms for Sony and asked him to design a vest for Apple. Jobs went back with some samples and told his team that it would be great if they wore the vests but the idea got laughed off. He decided it would be nice to have a uniform for himself and Issey designed and made him about a hundred of the turtle necks in question.

Jobs, in his death has been celebrated by fashion experts such as Robin Givhan describing his style as “unquestionably efficient and banal, yet with just the tiniest hint of Steve McQueen cool”. So is Steve Jobs really a fashion icon? My take, Jobs did not care too much about what he wore as long as he was comfortable enough to get stuff done and choosing an outfit that he could wear daily took away the hassle of having to think too hard about his appearance in public. But for this exceptional gentleman, a lot about him will be celebrated including his simple sense of style.

Regards,

Fashion Entreprenuer.