If being Amazon’s CEO ever gets tiresome for Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest human, he could always turn to a career modeling Western wear.
Bezos demonstrated that today after the successful test flight of his Blue Origin venture’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship. In his apres-landing photo shoot, shared via Twitter, Bezos wears a cowboy hat, Blue Origin shirt, jeans, sunglasses and cowboy boots as he leans against the New Shepard crew capsule.
The boots are the piece de resistance:
The lucky boots worked again. Huge kudos and thanks to the entire @BlueOrigin team. #GradatimFerociter pic.twitter.com/P9cUqRNbYv
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 29, 2018
Those lucky boots made their first appearance back in April 2016, after the similarly successful flight of an earlier New Shepard craft. They’re branded with Blue Origin’s motto, “Gradatim Ferociter,” which is Latin for “Step by Step, Ferociously.” The footwear also showed up on Twitter to celebrate Blue Origin’s success two months later, and again in October 2016.
“Gradatim Ferociter” boots aren’t the only fashion touches tied to Blue Origin.
When there’s a formal occasion, the folks from Team Blue are the ones wearing space-flown silver feather lapel pins. (Bezos says the feather logo is “just a symbol of the perfection of flight.”)
Bezos has been known to wear green-tortoise cufflinks, which pays tribute to the fable of the hare and the tortoise, as well as Bezos’ view that “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast” when it comes to sustainable spaceflight. The tortoise is also featured prominently on Blue Origin’s coat of arms. (So, who’s the hare in Bezos’ tale? I wonder…)
During a reception at this month’s Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, we even caught a glimpse of branded Blue Origin socks.
Which suggests a marketing opportunity: Why not open an online store to sell Blue Origin goods, ranging from stickers and socks to boots and model rockets? If SpaceX can make it happen, surely the mastermind of “The Everything Store” can as well.
