5 min readMilan Design Week, or ‘Salone’ to the initiated, began as an industry-focused trade show that overflowed from the fairground into town. First it blossomed, as design galleries and various districts played host to group shows, before exploding into a city-wide festival of projects, parties, exhibitions and activations that quite often eclipse the week-long fair’s modus operandi as a launchpad for new furniture and industrial design products from around the world.
In recent years, it’s become a hotbed of experience-driven content—where both the marketing budgets and creative prowess of fashion and luxury brands have entered the conversation, transforming the boutiques of the via Montenapoleone as well as countless palazzi, churches, gardens and private homes into stages for ‘stuff’. To many, it’s a travesty—overshadowing the real design in favor of splashy, at times hollow collaborations. But there are still plenty of projects high and low, big and small that hold value and virtue.
Said ‘stuff’ in recent years has ranged from high profile re-editions of 20th century icons (last year, YSL brought rare Charlotte Perriand furnishings), to new projects (during his tenure at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson made it a centerpoint); that are all seeking to connect their fashion with craft. While some of those initiatives have resulted in magnificent collectible objects and keepsakes; others did not have an impact past the end date of their immersive marketing installations.
Photo: Matteo Verdini
With the fashion and luxury industries both facing problems of saturation, restructuring, geopolitical uncertainty among other things, it felt important to enter the whirlwind of Salone 2026 with both an open mind and critical eye—navigating the plethora of private tours, previews and pushy ‘invitations’ to experience the latest collaborative offerings of these industries alongside pure, design-driven propositions and launches from the worlds of industrial design, collectible design, architecture and global craft. With galleries, museums, satellite fairs, brands and even nations jostling for our attention, it was often hard to see the wood for the trees—yet it was undoubtedly those who offered a Humanist approach to design who came out on top, causing us to hope, to dream, to laugh and to envisage solutions for better environments and ways of living.
Take the Egyptian artist Laila Gohar, who opened the week by designing a carousel in a park to fête her Arket clothing collaboration of market-ready workwear and boyish summer separates. In a jubilant nod to her practice of comestible sculpture that references international food traditions, her magic merry-go-round was made up of a giant pear, eggplant, radish, cabbage, fig and beetroot appeared where the horses should have been. It was the week’s undoubted viral hit, yet wasn’t the only case of creativity that tricked the eye and drew a wry smile. In the Chiostro San Simpliciano, Gucci creative director Demna replanted the cloistered garden with the pink and orange blooms plucked straight from the brand’s iconic Flora pattern, and commissioned 12 tapestries—yes, like the stations of the cross—that traced Gucci’s history from Guccio Gucci’s time at the Savoy hotel up until his own tenure in on-the-nose allegorical tapestries. Was it creative advertising? Was it design? You could argue it was both.
Photo: Courtesy of Gucci
To the new guard of Salone tourists and the cynical stalwarts, the search for beauty and meaning remains the key to the week. “What have you liked?” and “What have you seen?” are the two questions on everybody’s lips, as they make the rounds with lists and addresses to tick off, each forming their own obstacle course of ephemeral happenings–be they trade-leaning showrooms or blockbuster exhibits with queues around the block. For curious punters with time to kill and the patience for mind-expanding dialogues in between Bar Basso hangovers and spring breakfast gatherings, the Prada Frames symposium was the place to be, with its fifth edition taking place inside the complex of the Santa Maria Delle Grazie church, next door to Da Vinci’s Last Supper, no less. There, the cerebral Milanese design duo Formafantasma curated a series of talks dedicated to the power of image, inviting curators and artists, researchers and even a choreographer to speak in dense, politically-charged conversations on everything from artificial intelligence to visual and material cultures.
Those wishing for a more tangible design takeaway from the house that Miuccia built could visit Chawan Cabinet, the latest result of her long friendship with the American artist Theaster Gates on show in the form of a temporary Japanese tea house-cum-boutique, a stone’s throw from the brand’s Milanese flagship. There, the Chicago native’s two-decade obsession with Japanese folk ceramics had morphed into a three-tiered display of vessels: with Prada Home’s own polite porcelain tea sets in conversation with Gates’ tea bowls and sake jugs—emblazoned at times with an unmistakable upturned triangle—and the unbranded studio ceramics of his fellow potters and mentors from the ceramics town of Tokoname. With prices ranging from $1,500 up to $12,000 for the limited edition ceramics, the install questioned both the value systems and structures of folk art and the contemporary art markets, all wrapped up with a Prada ribbon.
Photo: Courtesy of Dan Thawley
Other flexes by key players tended to tug on the heart strings in different ways, through nostalgia, sensory experiences, and the privilege of visiting otherwise inaccessible locations—from 1920s public swimming pools to luxe midcentury apartments. Acting like a giant stained glass screen inside the Piscina Guido Romano, a grandiose installation of hollow cube stools by 6am Glass seen at last September’s Bottega Veneta debut by Louise Trotter felt like a grand, industrial statement in comparison to the cosseted bourgeois interiors on show around the city. In a first-floor corner apartment on a leafy central street, The Row’s favorite decorator Michael Bargo crafted one such décor yet with an American flair: he covered every visible surface in plush fur blankets, quilts and upholstery he’d designed with French furrier Yves Salomon. Some cane furniture was even decked out in archive skunk pelts, as part of an ode to his native Kentucky.
Photo: Courtesy of Jil Sander
One of the more poignant moments was orchestrated under the governance of new Jil Sander designer Simone Bellotti, who opened the doors of their Milanese HQ and invited guests to peruse 60 literary works chosen by cultural and design world figures in a temporary library; with each book set on a lit pedestal in the dark next to a personal note. Sofia Coppola chose Yukiyo Mishima’s Spring Snow, while legendary photography critic Vince Aletti chose Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp. Design, you might ask? What’s the link? Yet amongst the diverse tomes, staged in this stark theatre of books, a through-line of emotion and personality emerged that suggested ways these choices have shaped the lives of their readers, forming a potent database of knowledge of both head and heart to be transferred to those who care to look. Like at Gucci, there was nothing tangible to sell other than brand culture. But in Salone’s new attention economy, that may end up being all that counts.