Elon Musk’s fashion diplomacy: he rocked a batik shirt in Bali on a recent trip to launch his Starlink satellites – and the SpaceX CEO’s not the only tech billionaire who’s mastered the art ...
- SpaceX CEO Musk called his ‘batik bomba’ shirt – made in a tiny Central Sulawesi village – ‘awesome’, and was seen with it again in Bali this week after wearing it for the first time in 2022
- Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to wear a Rahul Mishra print shirt for Anant Ambani’s pre-wedding celebrations showed he knows what he’s doing with fashion, too
Billionaire Elon Musk was in Bali this Sunday, and boy, was he serving up some serious tropical swag.
The SpaceX CEO headed to Indonesia on May 19 where he launched his company’s Starlink satellite internet service. As part of his visit, Musk visited a community health centre where he was seen wearing a Javanese batik shirt.
“I think it’s really important to emphasise the importance of internet connectivity and how much of a life changer that it can be, and a lifesaver it can be,” Musk told reporters at an interview on Sunday.
“If you have some goods or services that you wish to sell to the world, even if you are in a remote village, you can now do so with an internet connection,” Musk said. “So it can bring a lot of prosperity, I think, to rural communities”.
This time round, Musk went with a more localised choice, picking a green batik shirt for Bali. The term “batik” refers to an Indonesia technique of using wax-resistant dyes to design intricate patterns on clothing.
Musk, of course, is no stranger to Indonesia.
Musk’s SpaceX has been working closely with the Southeast Asian country to bolster its internet connectivity. According to the World Bank, roughly 66 per cent of the country’s 280 million population uses the internet, although connectivity is poor in Indonesia’s rural and remote areas.