Silicon Valley's favorite fashion designer shared the advice Jeff Bezos gave him for making a big decision: decide at 10:30 a.m.

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Silicon Valley's favorite fashion designer shared the advice Jeff Bezos gave him for making a big decision: decide at 10:30 a.m.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
  • Italian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli recently shared some advice Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave him for making an important decision.
  • "He said, 'Normally, I make important decisions around 10:30 a.m. I'll discuss it the day before, I'll sleep on it and in the morning I'll actually make the decision,'" Cucinelli told The Wall Street Journal.
  • Cucinelli and Bezos have been friends for a few years, it seems. Last June, Bezos was a guest at Cucinelli's "Solomeo Summit" in Italy, which also included a group of tech execs like Reid Hoffman, Drew Houston, and Dick Costolo.
  • Cucinelli's clothes are also a favorite among leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, who used to wear custom-made t-shirts from the brand, and Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom.
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For anyone faced with making a big decision, Jeff Bezos has some advice that might help.

The Amazon CEO shared his method for making important decisions with Italian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli, a favorite among Silicon Valley elite. Last summer, a group that included Bezos, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo traveled to Solomeo, Italy, where Cucinelli's fashion house is based, to eat, take walks in nature, and talk about how to make the world a better place.

At some point during the trip — nicknamed the Solomeo Summit — Bezos shared some advice with Cucinelli, which Cucinelli explained in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal's Lane Florsheim.

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"When Jeff Bezos came to visit me here at my home [in May 2019] — he was here for three days — he shared something with me that I really liked," Cucinelli told the Journal. "He said, 'Normally, I make important decisions around 10:30 a.m. I'll discuss it the day before, I'll sleep on it and in the morning I'll actually make the decision.'"

Cucinelli told the Journal that the advice has come in handy during the pandemic, when Cucinelli's brand was saddled with $34 million-worth of surplus merchandise after his stores had to close. Cucinelli donated the excess stock to organizations worldwide that will hand out packages of clothing to people in need, according to the Journal.

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Cucinelli and Bezos appear to have been friends for a few years, according to GQ. Prior to the summit, he and Bezos had dinner in Seattle, where Cucinelli asked Bezos what he was doing for the future of humanity as the richest person in the world.

Bezos reportedly replied that he's planning to go to space, which Cucinelli dismissed by saying that "people will live on planet Earth for many centuries to come." He told Bezos that he'd like to come back in 500 years and see something built by Bezos, much like the Parthenon in Greece, according to GQ.

Cucinelli and his eponymous luxury brand, which mainly produces garments like knitwear and outerwear, is popular in both fashion circles and tech circles. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a well-known fan of the brand: While he has since moved on from his go-to gray t-shirts, he used to have Brunello Cucinelli custom-make his $300 or $400 tees. And Kevin Systrom, the cofounder and former CEO of Instagram, has also publicly proclaimed his love of the brand, although he prefers its sweaters.

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