Daniela Milošević, designer for the Colour and Trim Design department at Porsche, builds her dream car
When it comes to colour and materials, Daniela Milošević spends her days devising what the Porsche cars of the future will look like. Here's what happened when she configured her dream Porsche
When Daniela Milošević first walked through the front doors at the Porsche HQ in Zuffenhausen at the age of 17, she perhaps couldn’t have predicted that 14 years later she’d be influencing what colours are now available to us when ordering a Porsche. Back then, she was starting out as an apprentice upholsterer – a job that gave her, quite literally, hands-on experience in helping craft a Porsche interior. Today, as a designer in the Colour and Trim department at the Weissach development centre, she and her colleagues research and develop the Porsche colours of the future.Daniela tells us that inspiration for Porsche colours can come in the most abstract ways. For example, last year she was inspired by the eye colour of one of her friends. “We were at the beach and there were these reflections on the water,” she recalls. “One of my best friends has these green, brown and yellow shades in his eyes. And then the sun hit them. It was so inspiring. For me, it wasn’t just about spotting the eye colour itself but the emotions that this moment created too.”“It’s like when you have a nice dinner,” adds Daniela. “And, in the background, you hear a song and it causes you to associate that song with that moment – of being with someone you’re close to. With me, the same things happen with colours. They inspire me.”Daniela Milošević first started working at Porsche as an apprentice upholsterer when she was 17It all means that she can give us rare insight and advice when it comes to configuring a new Porsche. After settling down with her iPad, Daniela headed to the Porsche Car Configurator and began building her perfect Porsche, investigating the many choices and options available to customers.“I think I actually configured three cars overall, but I have now settled on my dream car,” says Daniela, who chose the GT3 with Touring Package as her ‘base’ model. “At first, I thought about going for the 911 Turbo. When I first started working for Porsche it was my favourite car. But when you see the GT3 Touring? I was like wow – how crazy is it to get this combination of elegance and sportiness in one car?”Elegant yet sporty: Daniela’s choice of Arctic Gray for exterior colour is deliberately understated – but offset by striking Neodyme wheelsMy perfect Porsche… and my perfect colourDaniela’s choice of the Touring package – which dispenses with the aerodynamic rear wing of the GT3 – reflects Daniela’s understated approach to her configuration. And the same goes for the exterior colour that Daniela chose for her 911 GT3 Touring. It’s one, she explains, that has a deep personal meaning. “I picked Arctic Grey, as it is one of the first colours I worked on,” she says. “Although I’m not trying to sell my colour! Rather that I felt it’s really important to show that grey or any less saturated colour can still look very special. And that’s what I like about Arctic Grey. It’s not extroverted, but rather something you can live with every day, which is what I want with my car.”It’s something Daniela also brings through when choosing the Touring package exterior in Black, which offers tinted taillights and the Porsche model designation on the rear of the car in a subtle black. It was a choice that can in part be explained by her picking 21-inch wheels painted in Satin Neodyme, with their gold-coloured hue. “Soft, elegant but with a technical feel,” is how Daniela describes them. “It’s why I went for the Touring package exterior in Black, as mixing the golden colour of the wheels with the original silver colour on the model designation might work on something like a watch, for example, but wouldn’t work on the car for me.”When creating your perfect car in the Porsche Car Configurator, it generates a unique code so you can make changes whenever necessaryIn keeping with the kind of sporty look that you expect in a high-performance sports car like a 911 GT3, Daniela has also introduced carbon fibre to areas of the exterior in the form of the Lightweight Roof in carbon fibre-reinforced plastic and the carbon Exterior Mirrors on the doors. “When I started working for Porsche, carbon was always the sportiest material you could have,” she says. “This is still what I had inside my head when building this car.“Everything works well together,” says Daniela of her overall exterior choices. “There’s nothing that you could call too much.”
I’ve had customers come to me and say they’re ordering a car, and can I recommend them a colour. I always tell them it’s a very personal decision
Express your individuality with the Porsche Car Configurator“Choosing a car involves lots of emotions, personal feelings and taste,” says Daniela. “I’ve had customers come to me and say they’re ordering a car, and can I recommend them a colour. I always tell them it’s a very personal decision.”Daniela explains that you might choose extrovert colours for someone just because they’re extroverted themselves – but someone who’s very quiet might also love powerful, vibrant colours. “People may have best friends who they share hobbies with,” she adds, “but I’ve found that they’re likely to have very different tastes when it comes to the colours used in their car.”The Porsche 911 GT3 that Daniela configured features the extended leather package. Details in Racing Yellow add a splash of bright colourConfiguring the perfect Porsche interiorHead inside Daniela’s 911 GT3 Touring and if there’s one thing that immediately grabs your attention then it’s the use of leather. By ticking the option for the Extended Package Leather Interior, Daniela is staying true to the principles she learned at the outset of her Porsche career. “When I did my apprenticeship as an upholsterer, my boss always told me, ‘A Porsche without leather is not a Porsche’. This is still in my head every day of my work as a colour and trim designer,” says Daniela. “I love textiles, and I love our heritage textiles, but when choosing a car I would always go with leather. I would put it everywhere, including the air vents.”
It makes it very special and meaningful to know that someone has stitched this on a sewing machine or covered the centre console in leather by hand. It’s part of our heritage
In the case of this configuration, leather does indeed cover the air vents – as well as plenty of other equipment, like the inner door sill guards and fuse box cover. Leather in a Porsche, explains Daniela, represents much more than just its tactile properties or its visual nature. “You know it’s handcrafted – someone was working on it, taking care of your interior, building it up. It makes it very special and meaningful to know that someone has stitched this on a sewing machine or covered the centre console in leather by hand. It’s part of our heritage.”A life full of colour: part of Daniela and her team’s role is to recognise colour trends and how they might work in the Porsche worldAs someone who started her career at Porsche working directly with leather upholstery, it’s no surprise that Daniela makes full use of it in her configuration – as many customers of the 911 GT3 Touring do. But it’s not all leather. In another nod to her exterior configuration, carbon appears inside the cockpit in the form of the Extended Interior Package Carbon matt option, which can be seen in the likes of the steering wheel panel and in the centre console trim.When you use the Porsche Car Configurator, it generates strikingly life-like images of what your car will look like“When I first started out on this task I thought of the customer because I am so used to doing that,” says Daniela. “But I then realised I had to think about my own personal tastes – and that was tricky! It also made me realise just how big the colour palette is that you can play with. By the end, however, the final configuration has a combination of sportiness and elegance. I’d describe this car as being like someone who’s in a suit but is wearing sneakers on their feet.”Porsche car colour trendsDaniela says that colour developments move almost as fast as the cars themselves. Along with her colleagues, she is constantly on the hunt for things that inspire the Porsche colours of the future. Fashion and the furniture industry are evergreen favourites. Daniela seeks inspiration every year at the Milan Design Week, for example.It’s a colourful life: Daniela chose an exterior colour that her and her team developed – Arctic Grey – for her 911 GT3 Touring configurationLike car colours, colour trends in furniture tend to remain in favour for several years. When a colour trend for purple kicked off a couple of years back, it in part inspired one of the most popular Porsche colours of recent times in Frozen Berry Metallic, as well as harking back to the iconic Raspberry Red Porsche colour of the early 1990s, albeit given a twist for the new electrified world.“A colour is never your colour – it’s about teamwork,” says Daniela about the collaborative process of creating new Porsche coloursFor Daniela, colour equals happiness. She explains how every year her team presents new exterior colours to an audience at their design studio. “The most important thing for me is to see people coming in and smiling at these new colours,” she says. “Although the thing I love most is watching people’s reactions when a Porsche passes them on the road.”The 911 GT3 Touring that Daniela has configured isn’t a reality – at least not just yet. But its air of understated elegance, with strong hints of its sporty nature, are sure to prove a head turner.Turning the special into the extraordinary: Porsche Exclusive ManufakturAs well as the multitude of options open to you, as Daniela shows in her build, when you create your car using the Porsche Car Configurator, there are a host further enhancements and personalisation available. At a time when customisation is increasingly important in the premium segment, Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur calls on decades-worth of experience to create highly personalised customer vehicles.A showcase for the highest quality craftsmanship and materials, there are currently more than 800 additional options offered by Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur across all the Porsche model series. For example, there are over 100 leather and yarn colour options, as well as the very finest leather from Germany and Austria and beautiful, natural wood to choose from. These materials, and the craftspeople who work with them, help turn the special into the extraordinary. For Porsche, the character of each customer is unique. Guided by the principle ‘Your inspiration. Our passion’, Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur helps customers build their own unique, personal sports car.You can see the exact configuration for Daniela's Porsche here. To create your own, visit the Porsche Car Configurator and design the car of your dreams.
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