Don’t sell these shorts short. Elon Musk’s playful barb—aimed squarely at a certain element of the futures marketplace—has resulted in a bit of an unexpected fashion coup, one that appealed to a large contingent of Tesla owners and the brand’s faithful.
As widely reported, Tesla sales are booming; short sellers of Tesla stock are fuming. Tesla CEO and figurehead Elon Musk couldn’t help but broadcast a related, triumphant quip, which was quickly transposed into an addition to Tesla’s apparel line. When a mob of Tesla fashion hounds descended upon the ecommerce processing page on the website, credit cards in hand, they shut it down.
There’s a bevy of Tesla arcana involved in the rakish little item’s ornament and price. The shorts are selling for $69.420; a smartypants like Elon could tell you whether or not the satin breeches are priced with a non-significant digit in a financial context, but the figure also references a 2018 social media communiqué which declared $420 as Tesla’s share price…as the number also has significance for the contemporary vipers out there.
Broadcast broadly across the backside is a Tesla model inventory acronym which, despite its single inverted figure, suggests a primary erotic overture…or a preposition dressed up like an adjective and, in turn, concealing a proposition: S3XY. Tesla’s logo is printed in the front of the shorts; short-sellers, make of that what you will.
The shorts are only available in fire-engine—a.k.a. light-my-fire; a.k.a. put-out-my-fire-as-imaginatively-as-possible-by-candlelight—red. With gold embroidery, no less, to represent the outlook for those who took the long sell approach with Tesla stock, even as they wear the shorts.