After years of working in the fashion industry separately and together, brothers Mauricio and Roger Padilha launched MAO Public Relations. Since 1998, MAO has successfully introduced new talent to the fashion industry as well as conceptualizing and producing runway shows for various top fashion designers and planned events for New York’s most memorable parties.
Native New Yorker Mauricio graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Fashion Design and an associate’s degree in Fashion Marketing. Upon graduation, Mauricio worked as a public relations director for various young designers until taking on the challenge of starting his own firm. In August 1998 he established MAO and opened a multi-brand showroom in downtown New York.
Roger, on the other hand, took the design route. For the first seven years of his career, he worked as a design assistant for various houses. In 1994 he started his own fashion line called SPOOKY and up until the company’s demise in 1998, SPOOKY was sold in major department stores and boutiques and appeared in most major fashion publications, broadcast, and on the backs of countless celebrities.
Now in its twentieth year, MAO Public Relations is enjoying a reputation as one of the most prominent fashion PR agencies in the fashion industry. The Padilha brothers look forward to continued growth and seek to further the professional careers of their clients through promotion, publicity and image management by approaching each collection as if it were their own.
In addition to the public relations showroom, MAO’s productions of events and runway shows (most notably MAO SPACE, a week-long alternative show venue to the 7th on Sixth tents which was produced for five years) has garnered them many awards and accolades. They received an award from Mayor Bloomberg for promotion of local business, were the youngest members of the CFDA Fashion Week Advisory Council, and have been named one of New York’s top 15 event planners by BizBash. In 2010 the Padilha brothers were named two of OUT Magazine’s most influential people and were part of Instinct magazine’s 10 Men of the Year. In 2017, vogue.com called the brothers “event coordinators extraordinaire” in a feature article on NYFW.
In 2008, the Padilha brothers began a distinguished publishing career in addition to their work for MAO PR and wrote The Stephen Sprouse Book, Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex & Disco and Gloss: The work of Chris von Wangenheim all published by Rizzoli.