Steve Jobs: un hombre y su marca (de ropa)

Es dificil marcar la separación entre la marca Steve Jobs y la Marca Apple. Tan icónica como su compañía ha sido su figura personal, especialmente en los últimos años.

Pero sin duda es uno de los mejores ejemplos tanto de capacidad de generación de marca para su empresa, como pasa sí mismo.

 Según su reciente biografía entre las razones está su deseo de dejar su «firma» personal incluso usando un uniforme a diario.

Influenciado por el uso en Japón de uniformes  – una costumbre nacida de la escasez tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial – intentó buscar algo similar para sí mismo y para Apple.

Recibido el chaleco-uniforme con abucheos por parte de los empleados de Apple, finalmente el único que adoptó un uniforme fue el propio Jobs, al recibir de Iseey Miyake el regalo de los «turtlenecks» negros que ya usaba.

Un uniforme-marca que vistió hasta la muerte, literalmente.

Extracto de la autobiografía de Jobs:

On a trip to Japan in the early 1980s, Jobs asked Sony’s chairman Akio Morita why everyone in the company’s factories wore uniforms. He told Jobs that after the war, no one had any clothes, and companies like Sony had to give their workers something to wear each day. Over the years, the uniforms developed their own signatures styles, especially at companies such as Sony, and it became a way of bonding workers to the company. «I decided that I wanted that type of bonding for Apple,» Jobs recalled.

Sony, with its appreciation for style, had gotten the famous designer Issey Miyake to create its uniform. It was a jacket made of rip-stop nylon with sleeves that could unzip to make it a vest. So Jobs called Issey Miyake and asked him to design a vest for Apple, Jobs recalled, «I came back with some samples and told

everyone it would great if we would all wear these vests. Oh man, did I get booed off the stage. Everybody hated the idea.»

In the process, however, he became friends with Miyake and would visit him regularly. He also came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style. «So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them.» Jobs noticed my surprise when he told this story, so he showed them stacked up in the closet. «That’s what I wear,» he said. «I have enough to last for the rest of my life.»

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBK4duusvAs&;feature=share&list=PL4CF3270557BA0109

Steve Jobs no es el único que vestía siempre de la misma manera. La mismísima reina Isabel II de Inglaterra también tiene su propio uniforme, aunque este es mucho más colorido que el de Steve Jobs: traje chaqueta o abrigo largo, sombrero siempre del mismo color, guantes, bolso de mano y zapatos oscuros de tacón medio.