Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO behind Tesla and SpaceX and extremely nerdy Bond fan, shocked the world when he showed up to the Met Gala with musician Grimes after Page Six reported the two were dating. But there was something even more shocking—his outfit.
Elon Musk has proven himself to be a big fan of the James Bond movie franchise time and time again. He bought the Lotus Esprit submarine used in the 1977 Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, and even claimed that he would make a functional version of the submarine Esprit for himself.
In a tour of the Tesla Gigafactory back in July of 2016, Jalopnik discovered an area of the factory marked off and labeled “Top Secret: Project Goldfinger,” a clear reference to the 1964 blockbuster of the same name.
For awhile, Musk’s Twitter image was of him dressed in a tuxedo holding a white cat, a clear reference to James Bond villain and head of the evil S.P.E.C.T.R.E. organization, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who is often depicted with a white cat.
He has also jokingly tweeted in the past about building a volcano lair, a reference to Blofeld’s secret Japanese base of operations in 1967's You Only Live Twice. It’s clear Elon Musk is not afraid to embrace an image of himself being a fictional supervillain.
The latest clue to his Bond fandom suggests his villainous fanaticism may have become more confused, based on his outfit of choice at yesterday’s Met Gala.
Musk went for a cream-white dinner jacket, an iconic look that debuted in the Bond franchise at the beginning of Goldfinger, which was recently paid homage to by an outfit worn by Daniel Craig’s James Bond in the latest movie, Spectre.
Under the jacket, though, is a very peculiar choice of shirt. Musk’s white dress shirt features hidden buttons and what’s known as a “Nehru” collar. Many Bond villains have donned a Nehru collar throughout the movies.
Blofeld wears a jacket with a Nehru collar in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Spectre, and Dr. No, the villain in the Bond movie of the same name and a fellow S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agent, also wore a Nehru collared jacket. The look is perhaps most recognizable today from Dr. Evil’s outfit in the Austin Powers series of James Bond parodies.
Musk’s pairing of the Bond-villain Nehru-collar look with the very Bondian cream-white dinner jacket is an interesting, if conflicting look, and he is almost certainly aware of the layered references to one of his favorite movie franchises.
You can tell by the expression on his face that he is extremely confident in his outfit. And he should be proud, because he managed to elevate an extremely nerdy obsession, one which I admittedly share and have been mocked for in the past, into high fashion.