Matteo Martignoni

Officina degli Estratti turns animal byproducts from the Parmesan hills into high-end cosmetic ingredients, with the help of AI.

The idea came from three things meeting at the same time. My knowledge of the cosmetics world, after years at Aēsop and around luxury beauty in Paris and Milan. My love for the hills around Parma, which I have known for a long time. And an intuition about what AI could do for an industry that struggles to standardise raw materials of animal origin.

Langhirano sits in the heart of the Parmigiano Reggiano consortium. The animal supply chain there is certified by default. That matters for a cosmetic project: it gives credibility from day one to a category that is usually viewed with suspicion.

The principle behind the work is the lesson Dennis Paphitis taught me at Aēsop, applied to a different material. Respect the process. Take away rather than add. Reduce the noise. Verticalise the production so quality stays in our hands at every step.

The laboratory will open in Strognano, in a converted barn.

NOVA is a startup born from a collaboration between me and GOLAB. We wanted to bring together AI and art, exploring the impact artificial intelligence will have on the human being in the years to come.

NOVA builds on a proprietary technological platform. Its ambition is to become a product in itself, available to museums and cultural centres that want to bring the digital into the museum experience without losing the experience of art.

As CEO I work on vision and organisation. The positioning we are pushing for is the most ambitious part of the project: NOVA as an observatory on the future of AI, using art as the language of reflection. Where most use AI to predict or automate, we use it to invite reflection.

The first exhibition opens in 2027.

Reflex Group is an international agency with offices around the world. In 2022 they asked me to open and run the Italian one.

My work has two sides. On Italian projects I act as the senior partner on the ground, from strategy to execution. On international projects I contribute to marketing strategy as part of the global team. The two sides feed each other: what I learn in Milan informs the work in New York or Shanghai, and the other way around.

Reflex attracts important brands in fashion, beauty and automotive. The international team is serious and capable. Every project is a real challenge, and the work stays at a high level.

GOLAB started asking me to support its most complex pitches, the ones that needed a strategic vision alongside the creative work. The collaboration grew into something stable by 2017.

At GOLAB I work alongside the creative team on the moments that need both: strategic positioning for a new brand, repositioning for an established one, the pitches where the client needs to see a future as well as a campaign.

A few years later, with GOLAB as the partner, we co-founded NOVA.

After three years in Melbourne at Aēsop headquarters, I asked the company for the direction of a country. I wanted to build a market from zero, not just inform one from above.

I moved to Milan and opened Aēsop Italy. From zero meant from zero. The business unit, the office, the back-office structure, the hiring and training of the retail team, the relationships with the city, the openings of the first stores in Milan, the aggressive plan for the years that followed.

Italy was a delicate market for Aēsop. A country with strong incumbent luxury beauty brands, deep traditions in apothecary and perfumery, and a customer used to being courted. The launch had to be confident but quiet, in the brand’s voice. Stores opened, the team grew, the work was good.

Then I moved on.

In Paris I was approached by Aēsop for the position of General Manager for Marketing, Creative and Product, based in Melbourne. I said yes and moved to Australia.

At headquarters I worked alongside Dennis Paphitis, the founder, to structure the marketing and product division. The work was precise: translate his creative and ethical vision into tools, procedures, and dependencies that the company could use to grow internationally without losing what it was.

When I arrived, Aēsop was turning over 80 million Australian dollars with 30 percent annual growth. The strategy ran through owned stores, many of them opening in new markets every year. That meant working across every department at headquarters: the identity of the brand, so strong in Australia, had to be understood and supported in countries that had never seen it before.

The project I am most attached to is the creation of the fragrance category. Working with Dennis, with IFF, and with perfumers of real talent, we decoded the olfactory signature of the brand and laid the foundations for what is today one of Aēsop’s most significant product lines. The line is still growing.

The other work that mattered was the organisational one. New departments, new teams, new procedures, all of it built with a DNA that put respect for the product above profit, and ethics above growth. It is harder than it sounds when a company is expanding at 30 percent per year.

I had spent a decade inside companies built on strong creative minds. Diesel, Star Factory, the years in Düsseldorf and Paris. I wanted to put my own strategy alongside that creativity, from my side of the table this time.

Surface to Air Studio in Paris ran one of the sharpest creative collectives I had seen. Jeremy Rozan led a group of designers, directors, and photographers with real talent and real respect in the industry. The mindset felt close to mine.

Together we created the Consulting division. The reason was practical: build long-term client relationships, grow business volume, reduce the one-off projects that drain a creative studio. Strategy and account management woven into the creative work, not bolted onto it afterwards.

Just as we launched the division, a pitch came in. Uniqlo wanted to enter the Paris market with the opening of the Opera flagship. Paris is a hard market for foreign retail. We won the pitch and ran the entire launch. The Consulting division did exactly what it had been built to do.

After the years at Diesel, Eastpak called to lead international marketing from the VF Corporation Europe headquarters in Bornem, Belgium.

The role had two main threads. Supporting the brand’s entry into apparel, a new category that needed a different kind of thinking than bags and luggage. And following the collaboration with Raf Simons on a runway collection, where the brief was to keep the brand credible in a fashion context it was not used to occupying.

The work was interesting. Then I decided to go back to Paris, for work and for other reasons. Some moves are professional. Some are personal. This one was both.

Diesel in 2001 was a company building something large. I moved from Milan to Molvena, the headquarters in the Veneto, and joined the advertising and creative team.

I worked on campaigns for the internal brands, then took on the communication of DieselStyleLab. In that role I brought DSL to global visibility through runway shows in New York, the first time Diesel had ever gone to New York to show. A few years later, the main brand followed onto the same runways.

The desire to grow internationally took me to Germany. Working alongside the country manager, we were tasked with repositioning the brand in a market that until then had been managed through a distributor. A new subsidiary, aligned with the company’s growing image. The work was done.

From Germany I moved to France, where the challenge was a different kind. Paris is the hardest market in fashion: complex, sophisticated, used to the best. A new creative strategy was built to compete among the major houses. During those years I also followed the launch of the first Diesel fragrance with L’Oréal, coordinated from Paris.

Star Factory was a boutique agency with strong clients, run by Luca Sacchetti. He had a natural talent for public relations and had built an approach that was modern, numerical and analytical. In that agency, performance was measured, nothing was left to chance.

I joined as an intern supporting the beauty division, Kenzo and Etro. I learned the ground-level mechanics of a press office: how a campaign is built, how a journalist is briefed, how results are tracked. Then I moved into media planning and buying, which is how I got hired.

Over four years I took on more: pitches, micro-strategies, creative campaigns for clients across fashion, beauty, and entertainment. The agency taught me that communication work is quantitative by nature. Every activity has a result that can be measured. Luca Sacchetti made sure we never forgot it.

Everything I learned there I still use.