Palantir’s chore jacket is a pivot to way of life model

In late April, Palantir — the software program firm that, in recent times, has maybe turn out to be finest recognized for its protection trade contracts and work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — introduced that it could be including new merchandise to its merch retailer. The newest providing was a cotton chore coat.

At $239 and in vivid blue and black choices, the jacket appears to be like like a normal providing that has, by way of photographer Bill Cunningham, trickled down into mainstream menswear for years. This jacket is a pastiche of nineteenth century French workwear that was worn by individuals really doing bodily labor; the one noticeable distinction is {that a} dainty Palantir brand seems on the breast pocket.

The jacket ruffled feathers, to place it frivolously. One TikTok described it as “Evil boring French workwear for evil boring guys.” The extra sartorially inclined questioned why Palantir, as a cheerleader of US navy would possibly, wouldn’t make one thing impressed by American workwear. Still, by the top of its on-sale day, the 420 models Palantir produced had bought out. (Palantir declined to remark for this story.)

For over a yr, together with its merch, Palantir has been making an attempt to promote the concept that it is, actually, a lifestyle brand. In a credulous interview with GQ main as much as the discharge of the jackets, a Palantir worker told the magazine that the corporate “exists to ensure that the institutions that power the United States and its allies have the best software capabilities on Earth,” and that carrying Palantir-branded clothes was a manner for different individuals to hitch their wagon to this ideology. As for what carrying Palantir merchandise would characterize, there are mentions of “supporting our warfighters,” “strengthening Western institutions,” and being apolitical. Most of the clothes don’t clearly sign this stuff — there’s no stars and stripes iconography or STAND FOR THE FLAG, KNEEL FOR THE FALLEN-type slogans. Instead, it’s Palantir speaking to itself and its supporters; chore coat wearers would possibly earnestly consider in these values, however their clothes, at the least, is a advertising and marketing train for the corporate itself.

“It makes sense to me. I think it’s actually really smart of Palantir to want this, to want to be on T-shirts and to want to be something that people wear, even ironically,” says Avery Trufelman, a vogue journalist and host of Articles of Interest, a podcast that final yr detailed the out of doors trade and its long-running ties to the navy. “It’s kind of a bad move to say you want to be cool — that’s not cool. But the initial aspiration is really, really smart.”

As Articles of Interest documented, vogue and the navy have a deeply entangled historical past — from bomber jackets and fight boots to discipline jackets and khakis, our up to date wardrobes are suffering from clothes that has origins in navy use. Some family identify manufacturers like Patagonia have also contracted with the military along with promoting fleece jackets to crunchy out of doors varieties.

It’s additionally not so uncommon {that a} protection contractor would wind up making merchandise for the buyer market, Trufelman says: artificial insulation by PrimaLoft was initially developed for the US navy however now traces jackets bought at REI and bedding at L.L. Bean. Camouflage prints supposed for elite troopers are now also part of the uniform of modern civilians. The distinction, after all, is that Palantir doesn’t actually make garments: It makes highly effective (and typically poorly understood) software program that even some of its own employees are more and more involved about. Palantir’s merch serves no tactical goal for “warfighters,” however is a brand new manner for the laptop computer class to sign model alignment.

“Palantir doing their version of it is sensible, because who are the people that are buying their clothes? They’re often urban knowledge workers, people that send email all day,” says Derek Guy, a menswear author. (You might know him as “The Menswear Guy” on social media.) “It’s just a very fashionable garment at the moment for that kind of class.”

Palantir has one thing of a cult following already, partly as a result of it has made some investors very rich. It has an engaged, committed base of retail investors and followers who debate what to do about Palantir’s “PR problems” and observe firm goings-on obsessively. Palantir itself additionally communicates straight with particular person buyers or fan communities. (Palantir seems to have beforehand even hired a moderator from the corporate’s Subreddit right into a communications position.) A line of merchandise past the same old tote bag is a manner for Palantir to show these followers and buyers into strolling billboards.

Connor, a Palantir fan and merch buyer who describes himself as “quite bullish” on the corporate, additionally owns tech merch from Tesla, Google, OpenAI, and Apple. “It’s fun to wear these items, and they’re a nod towards technology and brands I like or am associated with because that’s a part of my personality,” Connor mentioned in a message to The Verge.

Alex, one other Palantir fan, has collected a number of merch gadgets from the corporate relationship again to the early 2000s that he acquired secondhand like a zip-up sweatshirt issued to workers, in addition to newer releases. (Despite their help for Palantir, each Connor and Alex requested that The Verge not use their full names: Connor, as a result of he limits his on-line presence, and Alex, because of the “uptick in attention” that the corporate has gotten over their merch. Alex acknowledged that Palantir is a part of his funding portfolio.) Alex says he sees Palantir as a foil to different components of the tech trade which have “parasitically” extracted customers’ information, data, and private ideas.

“I see Palantir as being the antithesis of that, where they’re trying to get the brightest minds together to create technology that will better serve us as opposed to just use us for ad revenue,” Alex says. (Palantir’s expertise can also be utilized in promoting, together with a platform announced in 2025 touted by a associate as “the holy grail of marketing brought to life.”)

Alex says he wears Palantir merchandise as a “conversation piece” hoping to debate misconceptions in regards to the firm — however there have been few takers. Mostly, he says individuals would possibly say one thing underneath their breath in regards to the merch; he has additionally discovered posts on X by strangers referencing a “dude in a Palantir shirt” that he believes are about him. A barista as soon as requested him his ideas on Palantir expertise being used to kill Palestinians, he says (Palantir has mentioned Israel uses its technology for “war-related missions”).

“Every other time I’ve worn [Palantir] stuff … people will tweet about it, but they’ll never actually confront me about it, which is bizarre,” Alex says.

Palantir is clearly placing in additional effort to its merchandise than merely drop-shipping low-cost T-shirts that includes its brand — the corporate advised GQ it’s going to introduce a tennis assortment in June. But even with barely elevated merchandise, the output exhibits the boundaries of a expertise firm making an attempt to sign style or refinement on the subject of artwork and tradition. An merchandise beforehand on the market within the Palantir store is a white crewneck sweatshirt with daring purple lettering studying “SILICON VALLEY DROPOUTS.” Many individuals instantly famous the similarities between the Palantir crewneck and Off-White, the model based by the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh. The crewneck seemed to be referencing Abloh’s designs, like T-shirts with scattered, minimal typography in a mode that was significantly stylish a decade in the past.

“I don’t know what [Palantir is] trying to achieve, but you can’t design your way into coolness like that. It takes a much larger effort. It takes a different kind of cultural positioning,” says Guy, the menswear author. “It requires a lot more than just designing merch. I mean, if it was that easy to rebrand yourself, then everybody would do it.”

Alex, who has a inventive background, skipped the Off-White-style sweatshirt. “That piece in particular totally screamed, like, a rich dude that shops at Bloomingdale’s that wants to dress like a dude in his mid-20s,” he says. “I saw the piece for what it was and it was distasteful.”

The tech guys the merchandise cater to dwell in a bubble, the place style — a recent buzzword — and elegance are fed to them, Alex says.

“The stuff they’re buying … is already so downstream from the people that it originated from that by the time they get to it, or it’s fed to them by their algorithm or their stylist, it’s already out of vogue,” Alex says.

Anything with a Palantir brand or identify on it’s inseparable from the corporate’s enterprise: Supporters will rep it as a method to sign their alignment (or their monetary ties), and anybody morally, ethically, or intellectually against the corporate will see the brand as a marker of one thing really rotten. The Palantir merchandising effort is a manner for the corporate to get consideration on social media and hype up a base of individuals already on board with its mission (or to broaden its base to sympathetic audiences). But it’s one other, more durable activity to create cultural cache round a model marred in criticism — no quantity of firm merch a decade behind the innovative will change that.

The sold-out Palantir chore coat jogged my memory of one other tech agency’s adventures in merchandising: OpenAI’s employees-only (however publicly viewable) archive of company swag, which features a Dreamsicle-colored basketball and a T-shirt with a handwritten script that appears prefer it might be from a neighborhood pure wine bar. Buried among the many listings was OpenAI’s personal model of a chore coat, apparently from 2024, in the identical vivid blue, fake classic wash, with a bit brand dotting the breast pocket. Despite coming solely a pair years earlier than Palantir’s, there is no such thing as a GQ article about it.

Palantir’s efforts to talk on to its base of followers additionally dropped at thoughts a extra quaint branding stunt: an Anthropic pop-up final October, hosted within the West Village in New York City. Marketed as an anti-AI slop gathering, attendees lined up down the block for a cup of espresso and a free baseball cap embroidered with the phrase “thinking.”

Fans described it as “culturally coherent” and that “the aesthetic screams craft/authenticity,” clearly drawing a line between Anthropic’s instruments and people of its rivals extra involved with scale. If Palantir is the approach to life model for a gaggle unapologetically hyped on Western navy energy, Claude is the chatbot for the creatives, the dreamers, and the thinkers — at the least, that’s what the merch is making an attempt to say.

I stored scrolling by the various cloying merchandise within the OpenAI store till I hit the primary merchandise listed on the backside of the web page: a baseball cap from September 2024, a full yr earlier than Anthropic’s “thinking” espresso store pop-up. “Still thinking” is embroidered on it.