The notoriously unrealistic beauty standards for women are about to get even less realistic.
The star of a new ad for Guess in the latest issue of Vogue is a willowy, AI-generated model, whose synthetic status is only called out in a a fine-print caveat. Now that AI has hit the ads of fashions bible, it seems only a matter of time before similarly unrealistic models proliferate throughout its editorial pagesmaybe even the cover.
AI-powered marketing agency Seraphinne Vallora is behind the design of Guesss corporeally challenged vixen. According to the BBC, the process for generating such a model involves five AI-specialist employees, takes about a month to complete, and costs up to somewhere in the low six figures. The result is a glossy, golden-tressed Aphrodite; an Animorph at the precise midpoint between Kate Upton and Margot Robbie, strapped into a striped maxi dress. What might be more striking than who she looks like, though, is who she doesnt look likeand why.
Beyond a six-figure price tag, offering no real savings from a typical photo shoot that employs real photographers, hairstylists, and makeup artists, it also threatens to further unravel the progress the fashion world has made in diversity over the past 15 years.
How fashion got less homogenous
If the Greek chorus of Doves Real Beauty ads didnt spell it out clearly enough, racial and body diversity made huge strides in fashion throughout the 2010s. In a decade-ending retrospective from late-2019, Vogue traced the turning of the tide back to Michelle Obama. The former First Lady championed diverse American design talent, while global fashion houses clamored to outfit her. As the Vogue piece puts it, An arbiter of style in Washington and beyond . . . Michelle Obamas presence in the fashion world became a part of her image and American history.
Around the same time, models like Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman started to speak openly about the indignity of being the only Black model at fashion shows. Bethann Hardison, a pioneering Black model, went a step further. After noticing the pitiful diversity on display at New York Fashion Week in 2013, she sent an open letter to each of the major fashion design councils in New York, London, Paris, and Milan, calling out the abundance of houses featuring only one Black model or none at all. Although many of the letters recipients responded without much enthusiasm to the suggestion, a change came anyway in the years ahead.
The back half of the decade was full of diversity wins in fashion. A 2017 report from The Fashion Spot assessed 241 shows at that years New York Fashion Week, and found 27.9% of the models were minorities. That figure represents a near doubling from the 15.3% the publication found in its first report two years earlier. At the same time in 2017, semiretired pop star Rihanna introduced her forcefully inclusive Fenty Beauty brand and its lingerie line, Savage x Fenty, offering a high-profile showcase for models of all races, sizes, abilities, and gender expressionsincluding trans and nonbinary models. The brands enormous success seemed to confirm that this approach was perhaps something worth emulating.
By January 2020, Ashley Graham had become Vogues first plus-size cover model, while body positivity advocate Lizzo followed suit that September. Considering how quickly Vogue ended up repeating its milestone cover move, though, it might come as a surprise that the magazine hasnt had another plus-size cover model in the five years since.
Goodbye body diversity, hello Ozempic
Lizzos appearance on the Vogue cover in fall 2020 reflects the social justice reckoning that followed George Floyds murder at the hands of police that summer. (The cover copy hovering near the knee-line of her dazzling red dress reads: Lizzo on hope, justice, and the election.) In retrospect, that cover appears to be a product of its momenta moment that quickly faded.
In December 2023, Vogue Business described the preceding 12 months as the year fashion backtracked on diversity, citing post-pandemic macroeconomic challenges, a brewing backlash to DEI, and a handful of major fashion brands such as Alexander McQueen and Gucci choosing white men as their new creative directors. (Indeed, it was the uncontroversial nature of those hiring decisions that seemed to signal a return to the old ways.) DEI backlash has since been felt everywhere in the business world, including the fashion industry. As a Forbes reporter wrote of New York Fashion Week in fall 2023, Black designers made up approximately 15% of the weeks calendar, and the stereotype of the thin, white model prevailed on many of the runways.
Meanwhile, the emergence of Ozempic may have quelled the appetite for plus-size fashion inclusivity that had been building throughout the 2010s. The earlier drumbeat of body positivity has now been replaced by a conga line celebrating sudden, miraculous weight loss. With the increasing visibility of GLP-1 meds and their effects, self-acceptance no longer seems culturally aspirational; instead, looking like your most chiseled possible self once again does.
Of the 8,703 looks shown during fashion week this past spring, 0.3 % per cent were plus-size, dropping from an already low 0.8% the previous season. Body diversity may have peaked in fall 2022 at 2.34%, two months before the New York Post surveyed the fashion industry and the broader landscape of prominentfemale bodies and concluded in a headline: Bye-bye booty: Heroin chic is back.
Now, fashions retrenchment is coinciding with the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated AI image-generation tools.
Deep learning models vs. supermodels
Although the first digital supermodel, a Black woman named Shudu Gram, was created in 2017, the age of the AI model only began recently. Fast-fashion retail giant Mango launched its first advertising campaign featuring purely AI-generated models last summer, while H&M started developing digital twins of models like Mathilda Gvarliani this past March. Proponents say the growing use of AI in fashion modeling showcases diversity in all shapes and sizes, Associated Press reported in 2024, allowing consumers to make more tailored purchase decisions that in turn reduces fashion waste from product returns.
That sunny projection does not seem to line up, however, with the reality of the process that birthed the new Guess ad. According to the BBC article, Seraphinne Vallora created 10 draft models for Guess cofounder Paul Marciano to choose from, with Marciano selecting one brunette and one blonde, which the agency further refined. That description makes it seem as though the agency isnt intentionally perpetuating the stereotype of models as unattainably fit, white goddesses, but rather that this is simply how that particular iteration shook out. The agencys Instagram, however, is a talent pool teeming with similar models.
Asked by the BBC about its social media homogeny, the owners threw their Instagram followers under the bus. “We’ve posted AI images of women with different skin tones, but people do not respond to them, cofounder Valentina Gonzales told the outlet, we don’t get any traction or likes.”
Incredibly, the agency seems more willing to suggest that its fans are low-key racist than it is to admit that Seraphinne Valloras tech might be bad at generating AI approximations of women of color. But that’s the excuse the founders use to explain the lack of body diversity more broadly, claiming they have not yet experimented with creating plus-size models because “the technology is not advanced enough for that.
This line offers a blueprint for other companies exploring the AI fashion model space in the near future. Its a cop-out explanation that absolves anyone on the agency side or client side of intentionally dialing back diversity in fashion to pre-2010 levels. Either group can now just say that theyd love to feature people of color or plus-size models in a campaign, but sadly their hands are tied. With DEI now thoroughly demonized, the chances of anyone in either company flagging it as a problem are considerably smaller than an AI models waist size.
Most U.S. adults say they use artificial intelligence to search for information, but fewer are using it for work, drafting email, or shopping.Younger adults are most likely to be leaning into AI, with many using it for brainstorming and work tasks.The new findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that 60% of Americans overall and 74% of those under 30 use AI to find information at least some of the time.The poll highlights the ubiquity of AI in some areas as well as its limits in others. Only about 4 in 10 Americans say they have used AI for work tasks or coming up with ideas, a sign that the tech industry’s promises of highly productive AI assistants still haven’t touched most livelihoods after years of promotion and investment.At the same time, wider AI adoption by younger Americans shows that could change.There’s a particularly large age divide on brainstorming: About 6 in 10 adults under age 30 have used AI for coming up with ideas, compared with only 2 in 10 of those age 60 or older. Young adults are also more likely to use AI to come up with ideas at least “daily.”
Young adults are most likely to use AI
Bridging the generations are people like Courtney Thayer, 34, who’s embracing AI in some parts of her life and avoiding it in others.Thayer said she is regularly using ChatGPT to come up with ideas about planning what to eat, while also having it calculate the nutritional value of the pumpkin-banana-oat bread she’s been baking for years.“I asked it to make a meal prep for the week, then to add an Asian flair,” said Thayer, of Des Moines, Iowa. “It wasn’t the most flavorful thing I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s a nice stepping off point. More importantly, I use it for the amount so that I’m not over-serving myself and ending up with wasted food.”The audiologist has embraced AI at work, too, in part because AI technology is imbued in the hearing aids she recommends to patients but also because it makes it easier and faster to draft professional emails.She avoids it for important information, particularly medical advice, after witnessing chatbots “hallucinate” false information about topics she spent years studying.Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they use AI for work tasks at least sometimes, while about one-third say they use it for helping to write emails, create or edit images, or for entertainment, according to the poll. About one-quarter say they use it to shop.Younger adults are more likely than older ones to say they have used artificial intelligence to help with various tasks, the poll shows.
Searching for information is AI’s most common use
Of the eight options offered in the poll questions, searching for information is the most common way Americans have interacted with AI. And even that may be an undercount, since it’s not always apparent how AI is surfacing what information people see online.For more than a year, the dominant search engine, Google, has automatically provided AI-generated responses that attempt to answer a person’s search query, appearing at the top of results.Perhaps defying emerging media consumption trends, 28-year-old Sanaa Wilson usually skips right past those AI-generated summaries.“It has to be a basic question like, ‘What day does Christmas land on in 2025?'” said the Los Angeles-area resident. “I’ll be like, ‘That makes sense. I trust it.’ But when it gets to specific news, related to what’s happening in California or what’s happening to the education system and stuff like that, I will scroll down a little bit further.”Wilson, a freelance data scientist, does use AI heavily at work to help with coding, which she said has saved her hundreds of dollars she would have had to pay for training. She also occasionally uses it to come up with work-related ideas, an attempt to bring back a little of the collaborative brainstorming experience she remembers from college life but doesn’t have now.When it first came out, Wilson said she also used ChatGPT to help write emails, until she learned more about its environmental impact and the possibility it would erode her own writing and thinking skills over time.“It’s just an email. I can work it out,” she said. “However many minutes it takes, or seconds it takes, I can still type it myself.”
Most don’t use AI for companionship but it’s more common for young adults
The least common of the eight AI uses was AI companionship, though even that showed an age divide.Just under 2 in 10 of all adults and about a quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship.Wilson has no interest in AI companions, though she isn’t surprised that others do because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her generation’s social experiences.“I totally understand and sympathize behind why people in my age group are leveraging it in that way,” Wilson said.Thayer, the audiologist, also has no interest in AI companionship, though she tries to be polite with chatbots, just in case they’re keeping track.“I mean, I am nice to it, just because I’ve watched movies, right?” Thayer said, laughing. “So I’ll say, ‘Can you make me a meal plan, please?’ And, ‘Can you modify this, please?’ And then I’ll say, ‘Thank you.'”
The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Matt O’Brien and Linley Sanders, Associated Press
As a child, Heidi Barley watched her family pay for groceries with food stamps. As a college student, she dropped out because she couldn’t afford tuition. In her twenties, already scraping by, she was forced to take a pay cut that shrunk her salary to just $34,000 a year.But this summer, the 41-year-old hit a milestone that long felt out of reach: She became a millionaire.A surging number of everyday Americans now boast a seven-figure net worth once the domain of celebrities and CEOs. But as the ranks of millionaires grow fatter, the significance of the status is shifting alongside perceptions of what it takes to be truly rich.“Millionaire used to sound like Rich Uncle Pennybags in a top hat,” says Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, a wealth management firm in El Segundo, California. “It’s no longer a backstage pass to palatial estates and caviar bumps. It’s the new mass-affluent middleweight class, financially secure but two zeros short of private-jet territory.”Inflation, ballooning home values and a decades-long push into stock markets by average investors have lifted millions into millionairehood. A June report from Swiss bank UBS found about one-tenth of American adults are members of the seven-digit club, with 1,000 freshly minted millionaires added daily last year.Thirty years ago, the IRS counted 1.6 million Americans with a net worth of $1 million or more. UBS using data from the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and central banks of countries around the globe put the number at 23.8 million in the U.S. last year, a nearly 15-fold increase.The expanding ranks of millionaires come as the gulf between rich and poor widens. The richest 10% of Americans hold two-thirds of household wealth, according to the Federal Reserve, averaging $8.1 million each. The bottom 50% hold 3% of wealth, with an average of just $60,000 to their names.Federal Reserve data also shows there are differences by race. Asian people outpace white people in the U.S. in median wealth, while Black and Hispanic people trail in their net worth.Barley was working as a journalist when her newspaper ended its pension program and she got a lump-sum payout of about $5,000. A colleague convinced her to invest it in a retirement account, and ever since, she’s stashed away whatever she could. The investments dipped at first during the Great Recession but eventually started growing. In time, she came to find catharsis in amassing savings, going home and checking her account balances when she had a tough day at work.Last month, after one such day, she realized the moment had come.“Did you know that we’re millionaires?” she asked her husband.“Good job, honey,” Barley says he replied, unfazed.It brought no immediate change. Like many millionaires, much of her wealth is in long-term investments and her home, not easy-to-access cash. She still lives in her modest Orlando, Florida, house, socks away half her paycheck, fills the napkin holder with takeout napkins and lines trash cans with grocery bags.Still, Barley says it feels powerful to cross a threshold she never imagined reaching as a child.“But it’s not as glamorous as the ideas in your head,” she says.All wealth is relative. To thousandaires, $1 million is the stuff of dreams. To billionaires, it’s a rounding error. Either way, it takes twice as much cash today to match the buying power of 30 years ago.A net worth of $1 million in 1995 is equivalent to about $2.1 million today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.A seven-figure net worth is, to some, as outdated a yardstick as a six-figure salary. Nonetheless, “millionaire” is peppered in everything from politics to popular music as shorthand for rich.“It’s a nice round number but it’s a point in a longer journey,” says Dan Uden, a 41-year-old from Providence, Rhode Island, who works in information technology and who hit the million-dollar mark last month. “It definitely gives you some room to breathe.”No other country comes close to the U.S. in the sheer number of millionaires, though relative to population, UBS found Switzerland and Luxembourg had higher rates.Kenneth Carow, a finance professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, says commonalities emerge among today’s millionaires. The vast majority own stocks and a home. Most live below their means. They value education and teach financial responsibility to their children.“The dream of becoming a millionaire,” Carow says, “has become more obtainable.”Jim Wang, 45, a software engineer-turned finance blogger from Fulton, Maryland, says even if hitting $1 million was essentially “a non-event” for him and his wife, it still held weight for him as the son of immigrants who saved money by turning the heat off on winter nights.The private jets he envisioned as a kid may not have materialized at the million-dollar threshold, but he still sees it as a marker that brings a certain level of security.“It’s possible, even with a regular job,” he says. “You just have to be diligent and consistent.”The resilience of financial markets and the ease of investing in broad-based, low-fee index funds has fueled the balances of many millionaires who don’t earn massive salaries or inherit family fortunes.Among them is a burgeoning community of younger millionaires born out of the movement known as FIRE, for Financial Independence Retire Early.Jason Breck, 48, of Fishers, Indiana, embraced FIRE and reached the million-dollar mark nine years ago. He promptly quit his job in automotive marketing, where he generally earned around $60,000 a year but managed to stow away around 70% of his pay.Now, Breck and his wife spend several months a year traveling. Despite being retired, they continue to grow their balance by sticking to a tight budget and keeping expenses to $1,500 a month when they’re in the U.S and a few hundred dollars more when they travel.Hitting their goal hasn’t translated to luxury. There is no lawn crew to cut the grass, no Netflix or Amazon Prime, no Uber Eats. They fly economy. They drive a 2005 Toyota.“It’s not a golden ticket like it was in the past,” Breck says. “For us, a million dollars buys us freedom and peace of mind. We’re not yacht rich, but for us, we’re time rich.”
Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky
Matt Sedensky, AP National Writer
Collaborative design software company Figma has increased the price target for its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO). Shares are now expected to be priced between $30 and $32 each, up from the previously disclosed price target range of $25 and $28 each.
The cloud-based interface design tool is aiming for a valuation of around $18.8 billion, dramatically higher than last week’s projection but still below the $20 billion that Adobe had planned to pay for the company a few years ago.
Figma disclosed the expected price target increase on Monday in an amended registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The San Francisco-based company confidentially filed an initial S-1 form with the SEC in April. On July 1, Figma announced its registration statement was available to the public.
IPO market is heating up this year
Figma will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker FIG. The listing, reportedly expected this week, could be among the year’s biggest.
It comes as the market for tech-focused offerings has been roaring back to life. Circle Internet Group, Chime Financial, and Hinge Health are among the buzzy tech startups that have gone public this year. In addition to Figma, space tech company Firefly Aerospace is also expected to IPO soon.
In September 2022, Adobe (NYSE: ADBE) had announced plans to buy Figma for $20 billion in cash and stock. But the merger was scrapped due to antitrust concerns raised by European and U.K. regulators.
In December 2023, both companies announced that they had mutually agreed to terminate their merger agreement. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee.
In its SEC paperwork, Figma reported $228.2 million in revenue for the first three months of 2025. The company reported $749 million in revenue in 2024, an increase of 48% year-over-year. The design software maker has 13 million monthly active users.
Boeing’s second-quarter loss narrowed and revenue improved as the aircraft manufacturer delivered more commercial planes in the period.Boeing Co. lost $611 million, or 92 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30. A year earlier it lost $1.44 billion, or $2.33 per share.Adjusting for one-time gains, Boeing lost $1.24 per share. This was better than the loss of $1.54 per share that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expected.Shares rose slightly before the market open on Tuesday.Revenue climbed to $22.75 billion from $16.87 billion, mostly due to 150 commercial deliveries compared with 92 deliveries in the prior-year period.The performance topped Wall Street’s estimate of $21.86 billion.“Our fundamental changes to strengthen safety and quality are producing improved results as we stabilize our operations and deliver higher quality airplanes, products and services to our customers,” CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a statement. “As we look to the second half of the year, we remain focused on restoring trust and making continued progress in our recovery while operating in a dynamic global environment.”Boeing has been dealing with a variety of issues over the past few years.On Sunday Boeing said that it expects more than 3,200 union workers at three St. Louis-area plants that produce U.S. fighter jets to strike after they rejected a proposed contract that included a 20% wage increase over four years.The International Machinists and Aerospace Workers union said the vote by District 837 members was overwhelmingly against the proposed contract. The existing contract was to expire at 11:59 p.m. Central time Sunday, but the union said that a “cooling off” period would keep a strike from beginning for another week, until Aug. 4.Last fall, Boeing offered a general wage increase of 38% over four years to end a 53-day strike by 33,000 aircraft workers producing passenger aircraft.In June the National Transportation Safety Board said that its 17-month long investigation found that lapses in Boeing’s manufacturing and safety oversight, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the Federal Aviation Administration, led to a door plug panel flying off Alaska Airlines flight 1282, which was a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft, last year.Boeing said in a statement at the time that it will review the NTSB report and will continue working on strengthening safety and quality across its operations.The Max version of Boeing’s bestselling 737 airplane has been the source of persistent troubles for the company since two of the jets crashed, one in Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019, killing a combined 346 people.In May the Justice Department reached a deal allowing Boeing to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the Max before the two crashes.Boeing was also in the news last month when a 787 flown by Air India crashed shortly after takeoff and killed at least 270 people. Investigators have not determined what caused that crash, but so far they have not found any flaws with the model, which has a strong safety record.
Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
Stellantis has forecast that U.S. tariffs would cost it 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) this year, five times the hit taken in the first six months of the year when the carmaker tallied losses of 2.3 billion euros ($2.65 billion).The maker of Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, and Peugeot cars said Tuesday that net profits plummeted from 5.6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in the same period last year as it burned 3.3 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in cash for the cancellation of a hydrogen fuel cell project, changes in the fine regime for U.S. carbon emission regulations, and write-downs on platform investments.U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs cost the company 300 million euros ($346 million) in the first six months of the year, Stellantis said. During the period, U.S. shipments were down by nearly a quarter as the carmaker reduced the importation vehicles produced abroad.Stellantis said it expected net revenues to increase over the next six months compared with the first half of the year, when they dropped 13% to 74.3 billion euros ($85.7 billion). The carmaker also said cash flow would improve.Incoming CEO Antonio Filosa, who was confirmed in the role last month, said the new executive team “will continue to make the tough decisions needed to re-establish profitable growth and significantly improve results.”“My first weeks as CEO have reconfirmed my strong conviction that we will fix what’s wrong with Stellantis,” Filosa said in a statement.
Associated Press
UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, is in need of some bed rest this week. The companys stock price (NYSE: UNH) has been knocked off its feet again after the American insurance giant reported disappointing quarterly results and offered 2025 earnings guidance that was significantly below investor expectations. Heres what you need to know.
UnitedHealth Groups Q2 2025 earnings
Today, UnitedHealth Group reported its second-quarter 2025 resultsand they didnt live up to investor expectations.
For the quarter, the company reported an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $4.08. It reported revenue of $111.62 billion for the quarter.
As noted by CNBC, analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected UnitedHealth to report revenue of $111.52 billion for the quarter, meaning the company slightly outperformed expectations. However, those same analysts also expected UnitedHealth to report an adjusted EPS of $4.48. At an actual adjusted EPS of $4.08, UnitedHealth came in significantly below expectations.
The company may have beaten on revenue, but it made less profit than expected because of rising healthcare costs. Those rising healthcare costs are partly attributed to older customers now having surgery and other medical procedures that they put off during the pandemic years, notes CNBC. These include non-emergency procedures such as hip and other joint replacements.
Yet it wasnt UnitedHealth Groups Q2 results that gave investors the shivers. The company also updated its previously suspended 2025 full-year outlook. Investors werent happy about that either. UnitedHealth Group says it expects revenue of between $445.5 billion and $448 billion for fiscal 2025 and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of at least $16.
As CNBC notes, investors had anticipated fiscal 2025 revenue of $449.16 billion and adjusted EPS of $20.91 per share.
As a result of the lackluster quarter and poorer-than-expected 2025 forecast, UnitedHealth Group shares are dropping in premarket trading this morning as of this writing.
Todays results have seemed to have rattled health insurance industry investors, especially considering that UnitedHealth Group, as CNBC notes, is often seen as the bellwether for Americas private healthcare industry.
In sickness and in health
It’s not just UnitedHealth Groups latest Q2 results and underwhelming fiscal 2025 forecast that have rattled the companys investors as of late. Since the beginning of the summer, the company has seen bad news pile up.
In early May, UnitedHealth Groups then-CEO, Andrew Witty, announced he was stepping down for personal reasons. Witty had been highly criticized for his perceived tone-deaf response to the anger that Americans expressed against the company after the killing of Brian Thompson, CEO of the company’s UnitedHealthcare unit, in December.
Along with announcing Wittys departure, UnitedHealth Group also announced it was suspending its 2025 full-year fiscal outlook due to medical costs that were increasingly higher than expected. The companys chairman, Stephen Hemsley, was announced as the new CEO.
But a few days after Hemsley became UnitedHealth Groups new CEO, the Wall Street Journal reported that UnitedHealth was under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over possible Medicare fraud. This news, which UnitedHealth Group called misinformation, sent UNH shares tumbling.
Then, just last week, UnitedHealth Group confirmed on Thursday that it was indeed under federal criminal and civil investigations involving its Medicare business.
Americans angered by private insurance
While investors may be fretting over UnitedHealth Groups woes, few Americans are likely to feel sympathy for the private insurance giant.
After the murder of Thompson, social media users in the United States exploded not with sadness or outrage, but with glee.
What the reaction to the killing revealed was that there is a widespread, deeply rooted anger by Americans across the political spectrum against the countrys private healthcare system. As Americas largest private health insurer, UnitedHealth Group is a focal point for this angerand Americans didnt hold back.
As Fast Company reported at the time, social media was flooded with Americans venting their horror stories and frustrations in dealing with UnitedHealthcare and the other for-profit health insurance companies that have so much control over their health and financial lives.
My copay for thoughts and prayers is $100,000; I heard his condition was pre-existing; My ability to care was denied; My sympathy requires a referral; Submitted claim for condolences was denied, a user on Bluesky said.
This pent-up anger against UnitedHealth wasnt helped by Wittys response to the outcry, which some labeled tone-deaf.
UNH shares have had a bad 2025
As of the time of this writing, UNH shares are down about 1.11% to $279, driven by the companys poor Q2 2025 results and disappointing fiscal 2025 guidance. But UNH shares depression is nothing new this year.
Since the start of 2025, UNH shares had already fallen more than 44% as of yesterdays close of markets, primarily due to the rising costs of healthcare. Over the past 12 months, UNH shares have collapsed more than 50% as of yesterdays market close.
Mauro Porcini became the worlds 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, hes ceased to fit anywhere perfectly.
Designers see me as a business person. The business people see me as a designer. Im 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 Italys 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 hes 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. Its 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, its 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 blazersomething 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.
[Photo: Samsung (portrait)]
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 (Ive even seen him mix trousers with a track pant piping into his look). Its 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 Pirandelloin which a man becomes so obsessed with the shape of his nose that it ultimately destroys his lifeyou cannot let peoples 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.
Whats the one piece in your closet youll 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.
[Photo: courtesy of Porcini]
How long does it take you to get dressed in the morning?
Super quick. Between the time I wake up and leave, its 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. Dont be a slave to fashion. Your pieces dont 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.
Today, Salehe Bembury is one of the most in-demand designers in sneakers, who has collaborated with brands including New Balance, Crocs, Versace, Moncler, and Vans. With an aesthetic rooted in a combination of an outdoor lifestyle and funky, organic shapes, Bembury has reimagined streetwear as something as biological as it is mechanical.
But its almost impossible to centrifuge Bemburys fashion aesthetic from his own brand, and thats in part by design and what it means to be a creative in the era of social media.
We’re all kind of like cartoon characters in this space . . . we’re all just like kids in high school in the hallway, comparing outfits and competing and all that shit, Bembury says ahead of the release of his first career retrospective. It’s like, fucking Bart Simpson or Doug Funnie opening up their closet and seeing all blue shorts and orange T-shirts. So I would say that that’s what exists with my current selection of clothing, is that it just all fits within this cartoon character consistency.
Bembury says his fashion sense was originally born from mimicryNike ads and other influences that informed his style. But as he grew older, he learned, as we all do, what works on his bodyand he began considering his own signature look. Roughly a decade ago, he started carrying a wooden briefcase everywhere he went. That was me shouting Im an individual! he laughs. Beanies, too, were almost always in the mix.
But a move to L.A. led him to ditch the beanie, and an evolving aesthetic led him to retire the briefcase. His personal style became grounded in comfort, wearing high cinched Satoshi Nakamoto pants most days, any matter of tee, and maybe a Boro stitch (Japanese repaired denim) jacket up top. Handkerchiefs, a cycling cap, and wraparound shades often complete the look.
Grounding it all is an anchor in comfort. Take it back to childhood, I just remember what it felt like to go to church, and I hated that feeling, and I also thought that that feeling was representative of what it meant to have a job, says Bembury. Entering the professional space . . . when I first got a job at Cole Haan, and like, what I was wearing back then. It was in an effort to try to hold on to some level of individuality, but then also be a working professional. Id wear a plaid button down and Dickies. Is that professional? I’m not really sure, but like, that was my attempt at it.
Now, Bembury has evolved from wearing Uniqlo, to tailored off-the-shelf garments, to more bespoke pieces. That comes down to a combination of education and resources, he says. And while he knows thats a privilege, he does wish to remind the public that they dont need to settle for the fit off-the-rack.
[Photo: Chaymin Jay Barut (portrait)]
Actually, I get a lot of messages where people are simply curious how I get my pants like that. I think that’s also displaying maybe just a lack of understanding of simple tailoring, he says. I don’t even think a lot of people see that even as an option. But if you just taper these pants or crop them, they become a different pant!
Describe your style in a sentence.
Comfortable, utilitarian, with a dash of Japan.
Whats the one piece in your closet youll never get rid of?
Proleta re Art made me a boro fabric North Face Supreme jacket. A$AP Rocky has a quote, “we don’t rock clothes, we rock pieces.” And that is a piece.
How long does it take you to get dressed in the morning?
Not long (a few minutes). The longest investments may be around Paris Fashion Week.
What do you wear to a big meeting?
It doesnt change.
What’s the best piece of fashion advice you’ve ever gotten?
It’s probably the most said one, but it’s just like, “the best version of yourself you can be is yourself.” With the uniform that I’ve achieved, and with what I wear, it is myself to the fullest.
As a forward on the Chicago Sky, Angel Reese is one of the most dominant players in the WNBA, and when she joined us to speak about being named to our Best Dressed in Business, shed just broken league records by closing her fourth consecutive game with 15+ rebounds. (When critics panned her for “mebounding,” she trademarked it.)
It all embodies how Reese’s 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 walksa critical piece in increasing sponsors 19% that year and viewership by 170%.
A lot of the women already had the fashion, and I think the platform really helped them, says Reese. I think coming to the league with all the eyes that we had, it really shined a light on them and gave them the flowers that they deserve.
[Photo: Reebok]
Long before she joined the Met Gala host committee or had partnerships with Good American and Reebok (her signature Reese 1, inspired by diamonds, was announced this month), Reese earned the nickname Bayou Barbie for her glam perspective, even on the court, which was part of her game as long as she remembers. I always had my hair done, and my nails were painted, she recalls. My grandma used to put mascara on my lashes, and she brushed my hair up nicely. It was always dress to impress.
Reeses passion for fashion was spurred on through her mothers closet, from which shed steal bags and heels, the latter of which felt tricky for her 6 3 frame. I think it took me a while to feel confident in heels, going out, because I was already so tall, she says. But once I got older and seeing how much I stood out, it made me feel, like, super confident and bold.
[Photo: Chicago Sky]
That boldness is a throughline of her ‘fitsand perhaps the only one she cares much about. When I mention her silhouettes tend to embrace high waists and crop tops, she shrugs off any trends you might see, and insists she wants to have the opposite of any signature look.
Sometimes I’ll go streetwear. Sometimes I’ll go super girly, she says. I don’t really identify myself as dressing one type of way. [Though] I am into high fashion for sure. So you probably see me with a nice bag, nice pair of glasses.
Describe your style in a sentence.
I am versatile.
Whats the one piece in your closet youll never get rid of?
I think my bags. Ive created a collection of bags, when I see it, I need it, I have it. Im in collector mode, in my vintage era. I just got this double flap Chanel bag, its orange, and I love it.
How long does it take you to get dressed in the morning?
If I’m only going to practice, it doesn’t take me long. But when I’m getting ready for a game? An hour, for sure.
What do you wear to a big meeting?
I dont really have meetings [laughs]. Most of these things are on Zoom these days. I dont want to meet people or go to their office.
What’s the best piece of fashion advice you’ve ever gotten?
Be confident in your skin. Law Roach kind of told me before, don’t care what anybody else has to say. Like, as long as you’re confident in it and you feel good in it.
Its aura. You have to have aura.
