Caviar has built its reputation on a specific kind of excess. An actual Rolex embedded into the back of an iPhone 14 Pro, retailing at $133,000. A custom iPhone 13 Pro cast from aluminum salvaged from a melted Tesla Model 3. A so aggressively styled it looked like it belonged in an armory, not a pocket. The Russian luxury house has spent years treating Apple’s hardware the way a coachbuilder treats a car chassis, something to be reimagined rather than accepted off the shelf.
For Apple’s 50th anniversary, Caviar has produced something that sits in different territory altogether. The “Steve Jobs” iPhone 17 Pro contains an authenticated fragment of Jobs’ original black turtleneck, sealed inside the chassis beneath a raised titanium logo, on a body deliberately styled to reference the 2007 iPhone that started everything. Nine units. A certificate of authenticity. A “50 Anniversary Edition” engraving and Jobs’ own signature etched into the frame.
Designer: Caviar
The fabric comes from the same Issey Miyake turtlenecks Jobs wore religiously for decades, the ones he ordered in bulk because he wanted clothing to be one less decision in his day. Caviar has positioned the fragment at the center of the phone’s back panel, directly beneath a raised titanium Apple logo that functions as both a seal and a focal point. The black-and-silver color scheme mirrors the original iPhone’s visual language, right down to the slightly offset logo placement and minimalist engraving style. The overall effect reads less like a luxury phone and more like a museum piece that happens to run iOS.
With only nine units produced worldwide, the Steve Jobs edition enters the same rarefied air as limited-run watches or gallery-edition art prints, objects valued as much for their exclusivity as their craftsmanship. The authentication certificate that ships with each phone attempts to legitimize the provenance, offering buyers proof that the fabric fragment is genuine rather than theatre. Whether embedding a piece of clothing into a smartphone chassis constitutes meaningful homage or expensive novelty depends entirely on how much weight you assign to physical artifacts versus digital legacy. Caviar has clearly made its bet on the former, banking on collectors who want to hold a piece of Apple history rather than simply read about it.
Caviar framed the release with the kind of language luxury brands deploy when they want you to believe you’re buying meaning rather than materials. “We wanted to create a device that would serve as a true time capsule,” representatives stated, “by combining the aesthetics of the very first and the most current iPhone, and adding an authentic fragment of Steve Jobs’ clothing, we offer collectors and devoted fans of the brand a chance to feel a physical connection to the visionary who changed the world.” The phones are available now on Caviar’s official website, authenticated certificates included.
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