Latest news with #MauroPorcini
Fast Company
29-07-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Fast Company's Best Dressed in Business
BY It took me 35 years before I learned how to dress well. And it took about that long to learn who I was. That timing is not a coincidence, as anyone on our inaugural Best Dressed in Business list will tell you. For the first time in our three-decade history, Fast Company is celebrating fashion across the world of work: eight remarkable individuals ranging from athletes on the court of the WNBA to designers in the C-suite of Seoul to innovators at Apple. This editorial initiative is not about whether quiet luxury or that cut of jeans is still in. It's not about labels or influencers, either. It's about celebrating those who are comfortable enough in their skin to stunt across the professional world. Because most of all, dressing well requires knowing oneself. In some ways, the timing of this package couldn't be more fraught. Both high fashion and fast fashion are encountering new challenges in the face of shifting consumer tastes. But never before has culture afforded us the license to dress in so many different ways for any given circumstance. We live in an era of unbridled self-expression, fueled by social feeds and global retailers moving too fast to keep track of. This is an advantageous moment for individualism: There is no wrong way to dress anymore, and there are countless right ones. For a lucky few, work offers a path toward self-actualization. And the way we dress for that occasion is something we are here to celebrate. —Mark Wilson Mauro Porcini, chief design officer, Samsung Mauro Porcini became the world's first chief design officer at 3M, before taking the role at PepsiCo and, now, at Samsung. But as a designer seated in the boardroom, he admits to being constantly pulled between two worlds. His style captures this duality, and has served as a tool to be taken seriously as a creative in business—while helping him find peace within himself. Emma Grede, fashion entrepreneur Emma Grede is a mother of four who has spent most of her career building a fashion empire behind the scenes—and behind the Kardashians. As the cofounder of Good American, Skims, and Off Season, she's created a constellation of brands that reach into the closets of people around the world. But she's still managed to become a style icon in her own right by creating a rotation of classic pieces that she mixes and matches. Read more Angel Reese, forward, Chicago Sky As an all-star forward for the Chicago Sky, Angel Reese is one of the most dominant players in the WNBA. But her draft class did more than add fresh competition to the league when it arrived with a splash in 2024. It awakened the spectacle of the sport, celebrating the uniqueness of players who broke free from their uniforms with expressive pregame tunnel walks. Salehe Bembury, shoe designer One of the most in-demand designers in sneakers, Bembury has collaborated with New Balance, Crocs, Versace, Moncler, Vans, and other brands. With an aesthetic rooted in a combination of outdoor lifestyle and funky, organic shapes, Bembury has reimagined streetwear as something as biological as it is mechanical. His personal style is equally interesting.
Fast Company
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
Mauro Porcini loves surprising the board room
Mauro Porcini became the world's first chief design officer at 3M, before taking the role at PepsiCo and, now, Samsung. But despite defining what it means for a designer to take a seat in the C-suite, he admits that, for a few decades now, he's ceased to fit anywhere perfectly. 'Designers see me as a business person. The business people see me as a designer. I'm there in the middle between the two worlds, like I'm Italian and American. I'm both of them,' laments Porcini, before flipping this self-critique on its head. '[But that means] I'm exotic in Italy, and I'm exotic in America. Now I'm exotic in Korea.' Porcini captures these dualities in the way he styles himself. With roots in Varese, Italy, he grew up alongside the Missoni family, and into his early 20s, he became friends with many of Italy's most prominent voices in fashion. To this day, he has a penchant for Italian luxury brands like Gucci, Prada, and Valentino. But he insists that he's not afraid to mix them with drops from Zara. A longtime collector of fine footwear, his latest obsession is a Gucci x Adidas collab, which he owns in six colors. (He recently added their gold-clad loafer to his collection.) The pieces showcase the materials and silhouettes of Gucci, but with the three stripes of Adidas. It's an unexpected mashup that adds a signature to just about anything Porcini wears these days. 'The shoe has always been very powerful, because you can go crazy with the shoes. You can be really different. And for a man, it's an easy accent,' says Porcini. 'But then you go into these boardrooms, and you need to pitch investments of millions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars, so rebalancing that with a jacket or blazer—something that reminds them that you're still part of that [business culture is essential]. So you're not going there with just a T-shit and sneakers.' Porcini adores a double-breasted wool coat, and his latest is a custom commission from Golden Goose, embroidered with cities from his life: Milan, Dublin, Minneapolis, New York, and Seoul. The overall effect is that Porcini has been mixing classic suit silhouettes with hints of sport (I've even seen him mix trousers with a track pant piping into his look). It's perpetually surprising without being heavy-handed; intentional without feeling try-hard. 'Each of us has different ways of dressing, but show that you have an original point of view. Because this is what designers do,' says Porcini. 'They look at reality, they look at their world, and have a unique and original point of view on what they need to do. So through your dress, communicate that kind of original point of view. And communicate the confidence of sharing it.' For Porcini, dressing well is a tool to be taken seriously as a creative in business, but its base is about self-acceptance, love, and expression. As he learned as a teenager reading the 1926 allegory One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello—in which a man becomes so obsessed with the shape of his nose that it ultimately destroys his life—you cannot let people's perception of you dilute who you are. 'You need to have the peace of mind and the awareness that people will judge you, not on the basis of just what you do, but on the basis of who they are,' says Porcini. 'And you need to be okay with it.' Describe your style in a sentence. A mix of creativity, confidence, self-love, but also love for the world. What's the one piece in your closet you'll never get rid of? There is a trouser that I painted when I was, I think I was 17, and I still have it, even if, obviously it doesn't fit anymore. I have more than one, but there is one that I really love. I started to paint on clothing, and I started to sell this clothing to make a little bit of money. I paid for my driving school in this way. When I was 18, I even sold one to my teacher who was giving me driving lessons. How long does it take you to get dressed in the morning? Super quick. Between the time I wake up and leave, it's 45 minutes. And that includes emails, breakfast, shower, and getting dressed. What do you wear to a big meeting? I try to have a touch of creativity that creates surprise in the room and talks about my belonging to the creative community. But then I blended with a code that is more accepted by the audience, the business community. I try to create that comfort and discomfort together. What's the best piece of fashion advice you've ever gotten? It was not articulated in one sentence, but it's literally, be yourself and be unique. Don't be a slave to fashion. Your pieces don't need to be the latest. They need to be something that makes sense for you and makes sense for what you want to project to the world.
Korea Herald
27-03-2025
- Business
- Korea Herald
Samsung eyes Pepsi's Mauro Porcini as first foreign design chief
Samsung Electronics is in discussions with Mauro Porcini, a globally renowned industrial designer, to appoint him as the chief design officer of its mobile business division, industry sources said Thursday. If finalized, Porcini would become the first foreign CDO in the tech giant's history since its founding in 1969. Porcini is known for spearheading design-led innovation at global companies such as 3M and PepsiCo. In 2012, he was the only designer named to Fortune's 40 Under 40 list, and he was also awarded Italy's national merit honor for elevating the country's design reputation on the global stage. Samsung has a history of recruiting world-class experts across various domains to drive innovation. In 2019, Samsung hired Steve McManus, a former senior designer at Apple, to lead the design strategy team in its mobile division. McManus had played a key role in hardware design for the iPhone and iPad, later guiding smartphone design strategies at Samsung. In artificial intelligence and machine learning, Samsung brought in David Eun, a former executive at Google and AOL, in 2011 to launch Samsung Next, where he helped shape the company's open innovation and venture investment strategies. In 2016, Sebastian Seung, a neuroscience expert and professor at Princeton University, joined Samsung and was later promoted to president. He has since led Samsung's AI research, focusing on neuroscience-driven AI development. In 2013, the company appointed Gregory Lee, a former executive at Johnson & Johnson, as Executive Vice President for North America. He later became head of Samsung's mobile division in the US, playing a key role in expanding the company's presence and brand recognition in the region. In 2015, Samsung appointed Lee Don-tae, former co-CEO of the British design firm Tangerine, as head of its global design center, further strengthening its global design capabilities.
