Steve Jobs Wore The Same Outfit Everyday And Here's Why

Parvati Misra - Nov 28, 2018

There's an entire story behind Steve Jobs' black turtleneck T-shirts and blue jeans that involved Sony.

It seems that all futurists and inventors go by their distinct personal styles. Albert Einstein, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs went with the same outfit every day. In terms of personal style, the co-founder of Apple was an odd-ball.

Unlike most corporate executives who go to work in typical office attire, Steve Jobs was committed to his uniform of a black turtleneck T-shirt, blue jeans and a New Balance pair of sneakers. The Apple co-founder wore the same black turtleneck every day even when joining important events which the tech firm hosted, including the MacWord 2007. This was the first time he had presented the iPhone.

Steve Jobs in his typical outfit

There has an interesting story behind the black turtleneck – an inseparable part of Jobs’ daily style statement (account for a major of his closet).

In the 1980s, Jobs visited Japan. He met Akio Morita – the chairman of Sony. He also visited a factory of Sony, and he was interested in the outfit that all workers in this factory were wearing. When Jobs asked about the uniform, Morita said that workers at the factory had no clothes to wear after the war, so Sony had to provide them with clothes every day. After that, these clothes became a distinct style of the company.

Jobs told Walter Isaason, who wrote his biography Steve Jobs, he wanted that Apple also had its own uniform. He even asked Issey Miyake - the Japanese designer who designed the uniform of Sony, to create a typical design for Apple.

But when Jobs tried to bring the vest into use for the first time, he met the dispute. The idea of uniform for Apple was entirely dropped from the table.

During the period Miyake designed uniforms for the Apple workers, Jobs frequently visited the designer. This gradually fostered the friendship between them, so when the idea of a uniform for Apple was rejected, Jobs decided to ask Miyake to design several of the black turtleneck T-shirts for his closet.

Miyake obliged, and soon Jobs received many turtlenecks from the designer. Jobs told Issason that he had sufficient outfits for the rest of his life.