My 7 favorite things from Milan Design Week

I’m addicted to the curtain. That moment when you walk through a dark hall, push through two layers of dark drapes, and whatever you see next—no matter what it is—is a bit of a thrill.

It’s one of my favorite motifs of Milan Design Week, when half a million people from around the globe for a citywide celebration of all things design. 

The hook is Salone de Mobile, the world’s largest furniture trade show. Its 3/4-mile-long fairgrounds feature 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries. (The fairgrounds are so expansive they actually sit outside Milan in a city called Rho.)

But many visitors never make it there, instead exploring Milan’s design districts that are full of open houses and sponsored installations for the week, where you might find yourself queuing up in a 400-year-old palazzo to see some grand sculpture that’s probably best described in pictures because all it really does is fill you with wonder. 

I’d love to tell you I experienced everything at Milan Design Week. That’s about impossible for one human. But gosh did I try. Here are some of my favorite things I saw.

Edible Reveries

Who doesn’t love a good gimmick, especially when you can chew it?

Edible Reveries is a small installation for the giant noodle brand Barilla. To promote their Artisia pasta—in which noodles are 3D-printed into formerly impossible, intricate shapes with semolina and water—the company teamed with Studio Yellowdot, which created a joyful lounge to eat a custom noodle that was also created by the design studio. It was one of a few food-focused installations in a year where the design world seemed to be stress eating.

The furniture pieces were 3D-printed, wooden noodle loungers (those weren’t edible), while the noodle they created was a finger food that popped in your mouth like a tiny dumpling. I was left wanting more, but there’s a catch: Barilla’s team told me that they can only print 36 pieces of pasta at a time on its single printer created for the job. So Artisia will remain in limited quantities for the foreseeable future, but you can still buy it online for prices around $18.  

Salone Raritas 

Not to get too insider-y, but there’s definitely a politics inside Milan Design Week, a tension between Salone’s focus on mass produced trade show furniture and everything else around the city. Salone Raritas, in its first year, proved to be a promising modernization of Salone’s premise.

The new exhibit featured one-off collectible pieces ranging from antique marble columns to rare, vintage furniture. Pieces started at a few thousands dollars, and reached into the nosebleed section of trust funds.

Raritas was quite simply the best part of Salone—and not just because it featured a new work by one of my favorite artists-designers, Sabine Marcelis, called Plume. With all the delight of a giant children’s toy, the large, pink acrylic sculpture features bubbles floating through oil. I could stare at this thing for hours. 

Lexus SPACE

Vehicles were all over Milan this year, and by and large, they had a good showing. Hyundai enlisted visitors to make their own designs in bent metal, and launch paper airplanes. Kia showed off exciting new EV concepts that more or less speak for themselves. Fiat put people close to archive models in a ’70s-flavored party room, and Lotus showed off a collab none of us will ever buy alongside their 1990s Sega Genesis game hooked up to a CRT.

But in terms of real experiential design, Lexus SPACE won my heart. Its centerpiece was a six-wheeled sci-fi tank of a minivan called the Lexus LS Concept, which explores how a large vehicle can change in the self-driving age. 

Lexus didn’t stop with the concept car, and it invited several design studios to mock up small vehicle interiors that you could climb into yourself. They ranged from a seat that wrapped you in a shimmering fiber optic coat—almost merging you with the vehicle—to an intricate, wooden interior designed by Japanese craftsmen. 

The auto industry is evolving a little slower than we expected, but it was refreshing to imagine how redesigning vehicle interiors with fewer limits could vastly impact the experience of travel.

The Paper Log: Shell and Core

The Japanese fashion house Issey Miyake is known for its intricately pleated garments. Few people realize, these fabrics are actually pleated on paper—which is typically recycled during the production process.

But the paper naturally absorbs fabric dyes, meaning it is a beautiful, even structural object if used properly. At its Milan store, Issey Miyake featured a collection of pieces developed entirely from this haute waste paper. They included compressed paper stools, which looked similar to an unpolished marble. Other times, they were woven together like a bundle of wood, and shaped into a chair and table. Look from the top, and the colors swirl, almost like a softly psychedelic tree ring. 

Dior’s bamboo and glass

There’s a reason that caviar is served on potato chips: It’s delicious. And Dior managed to make magic with the same balance of luxury and commodity with its celebration of craft at Milan Design Week.

Dior used the stage to launch the Corolle lamp, designed by French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance. A handblown piece of glass shaped like a bell, its etched cannage patterning Dior is known for ripples shadow across surfaces. 

But the installation promoting it was an intimate ode to craft across materiality. It features not one, but several studies of lamp, all in different sizes and patternings. You could lift the delicate pieces, twirl them in your hands, and watch light dance around with incredible expression and tactility.

But all of these artisanal lamps were ensconced in rooms that were absolutely covered in countless yards of humble, woven bamboo. It was like walking inside some magical floral basket, as bamboo flowers blossomed from every direction. 

In a year where everyone is buzzing about a return to craft in the age of AI, Dior managed to articulate its inherent value—regardless of one’s budget.

Nike Air Lab

Confession: I did not stop by the Nike Air Lab set up in Milan this week. But I put it on the list anyway. As a journalist who has visited Nike on several occasions, I’ve gotten to see wild amounts of Nike’s Air production process, developmental experiments, and future prototypes. The Air Lab shared this insider access with the world, which is why I’ve heard it was on the shortlist of many who visited this week.

Nike shared new products like its Air Milano inflatable jacket that premiered at the Winter Olympics, along with experiments in how Air bubbles could serve as cushioning for chairs. Considering Nike’s Air furniture arrived at the same time Ikea debuted a metal-framed inflatable chair of its own, it seems we just can’t break our fascination with blow-up design. 

The Eames Houses

Ray and Charles Eames realized many dreams through experimentation and sheer stick-to-it-ness. One they didn’t was a factory-built house, or what we colloquially call a “prefab.”

That dream has finally come to life, half a century later, with the Eames Pavillion System, developed by the Eames Office in conjunction with Kettal. (And you can read all about it in our piece on the product here.) It launched at Milan Design Week within the city’s Triennale museum, which features two fully built houses that you can explore alongside a greater exhibit showcasing their work. That greater exhibit, which runs through May 10, is worth checking out: particularly the intricate, small-scale models of other Eames house designs that have still gone unrealized.

Okay, confession two: I didn’t make this one either. So maybe I should have featured other items here, like the delightful Swatch “AI DADA” retrospective that featured a museum’s worth of historic designs from artists like Keith Haring. Or maybe Full Metal Banquet, a wild woven meal framed in the gilded interiors of the Palazzo Litta.)

But I am trying to head over now while my editor reads this piece.