MILAN — Thai sausage canapes and Teller negronis at T Magazine’s Villa Necchi bash or a perfect albino strawberry at a quiet presentation by The Row? Pick your poison.
Brands and the top clients they love to court flocked to this year’s Milan Design Week, despite the downturn in global luxury sales and the spectre of Trump’s trade war. And while the city-wide extravaganza — complete with satellite fairs like Alcova and slick brand exhibitions — now spills far beyond the bounds of the Salone del Mobile design fair which still anchors the proceedings, the word “salon” feels more relevant than ever to describe the event.
This year, the sense of “dolce vita” that typically runs through the event came with darker undertones, and not just because US trade policy threatens to put a significant dent in sales of home furnishings, which have lower profit margins than luxury fashion, but because the aesthetics of many of the presentations skewed darker. There was also the sense that the marketing onslaught may be hitting saturation point.
And yet, in a world where furniture and objets can telegraph status and belonging as easily as fashion now that they can be posted to social media, consumer interest in design is rising and the stakes for brands aiming to make a splash at Salone are only likely to rise.
When for some, Milan Design Week is as much about generating buzz online as interacting with tastemakers and clients in the real world, it’s little wonder that some of the world’s greatest showmen and women were among the talents called upon to energize the week. Superstar creatives such as theatre director Robert Wilson, stage designer Es Devlin and filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino were engaged by the fair itself for blockbuster incursions into historic Milanese buildings or on-site activations, following in the footsteps of last year’s fairground draw, the late David Lynch.
Devlin created a rotating illuminated library with over 3,200 books in the courtyard of the Pinacoteca di Brera, while in the garden of the Triennale, recent Chanel set design favourite Willo Perron conceived a sound wave-inspired exhibition and concert venue for skater brand Vans, inviting Björk to DJ for a packed house on Tuesday night. Nike, too, was among the mass-market brands betting on the intersection of music, fashion and design, enlisting Berlin-based office Sub (of Balenciaga set design fame) to create an inert nightclub space with PAN Records, in a nod to the European underground music scene that will culminate in a Salone special edition of the mythic Milanese club night Gatto Verde this Friday.
Drawing on the archives of important designers from the past has been a key strategy for the design world in recent years. This year, prestige fabric house Dedar unveiled a collaboration of woven textiles with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, while Saint Laurent exhibited previously unrealised pieces by Charlotte Perriand in an important step towards offering collectible design propositions.
Another highlight was the Deborah Needleman-curated “Speak, Memory” exhibition installed in the Renzo Mongiardino-designed apartment of Cabana magazine founder Martina Mondadori, where, with the support of LVMH’s Métiers d’Art arm, the former editor of T and WSJ combined the works of sculptors, weavers and furniture makers in a meditation on past and present. It was an elegant example of Salone’s ability to offer visiting guests exclusive experiences, while also showcasing design innovation.
Formafantasma and Dimore Studio are two design duos with a keen sense of the theatrical — and yet they defend almost diametrically opposed worlds. In some respects, both are the reigning princes of Salone, their names linked to multiple large-scale projects for major design brands across the city this week. The former, composed of Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, are ecologically minded aesthetes, with a highly -conceptual approach that unites a sense of social responsibility and historical precedent with a futuristic, bourgeois Italian design sensibility. In recent years, Formafantasma has created a slew of research-based museum shows and publications on subjects such as wool and wood, and the proliferation of their work as an intellectual canvas for brand-building seems to signal a push for deeper meaning in design storytelling.
At the fair itself, Formafantasma designed this year’s conference space in grass green velvet, while at the Teatro Lirico, they dreamt up an all-singing, all-dancing performance replete with Jil Sander costumes and sculpted woodland animals to animate design behemoth Cassina’s 60th anniversary of key pieces by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret. Add to that the presentations of new lamps for Flos lighting and their returning role as curators of the fourth edition of Prada Frames — Mrs. Prada’s annual design symposium that took place this year inside the Milan central station’s former royal waiting rooms and on board a refurbished train designed by Gio Ponti for the 1960 Rome Olympics — and Formafantasma has had its hands full.
Design and fashion darlings in their own right, Dimore Studio’s Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci, also flexed their prowess as cinematic storytellers this week. Their schtick, however, is an opulent and exoticised vision of design — one that remixes dramatic references from cinema and art history with an eclectic curation of antiquities. With retail spaces for the likes of Dior and Fendi under their belts, the duo are a dab hand at translating their romantic and decadent bent into commercial spaces, yet it is in temporary exercises such as “Salone” installs that they truly thrive.
Known for offering decadent visions of draped and tied fabrics, rooms seen through peepholes or battered by invisible wind machines, the duo was commissioned this year to create Loro Piana’s mise-en-scène “La Prima Notte di Quiete,” which situated their new ‘70s and ‘80s-inspired velvet and cashmere-upholstered sofas and bedding in a palatial apartment scene in the aftermath of a Bacchanalian party, complete with spilled grapes, broken china and an unmade bed. For Yves Salomon, they juxtaposed intarsia chair designs in recycled shearling and mink with the antique Carlo Bugatti chairs that inspired them.
Among the sound and fury of Salone spectacles, some major players took a relative breather in comparison to years past. Loewe, whose highly -anticipated installations under Jonathan Anderson’s reign constantly questioned the relationship between artists and craftspeople, opted for an exhibition of artist-designed teapots displayed on a single plinth. Among their creators were canonical contemporary artists like Rosemary Trockel and Edmund de Waal, as well as lesser known names whose practices align with the values of the Loewe Craft Prize, now a well-established incubator and reference for craftspeople around the world. Hermès too went minimal, with artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas describing their floating white cube displays of coloured glassware and a geometric porcelain service as “lean.”
“Lean” is a word that could equally be applied to the restrained capsule of ultra-premium Kashmiri blankets hung on Julian Schnabel-designed racks that The Row, newcomers to Salone and the home category, displayed in their still-empty Milanese office, where they invited a select group of editors and friends to an exclusive garden party.
Unlike at their recent fashion shows, social media was welcomed, and the teaser left many wondering how Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen might grow their home offer in line with the prestige design pieces by the likes of Jean Prouvé and Jean-Michel Frank that clients have become accustomed to seeing in their retail spaces.
Ralph Lauren, another American world-builder, isn’t one for restraint. His richly nostalgic homewares have become a stalwart of the trad decor world, steadily growing since his first foray into the category in 1983. With a permanent Milanese palazzo and dedicated teams that push out seasonal capsules of everything from curtain fabrics to four-poster beds, Ralph Lauren Home is both a cohesive and comprehensive offer for those so inclined to themes such as “Island,” “Estate” and the new Santa Fe-inflected “Canyon Road” collection which, among the rustic rough-hewn oak furniture, includes silversmithing and textile designs by Navajo artists Naomi and Tyler Glasses. Of all the fashion and luxury houses showing at Salone, Ralph may be the most deserving of the overused term “lifestyle brand.”
