Range Rover Crashed Milan Design Week in the Best Way Possible

It’s Milan Design Week 2026, aka Salone del Mobile, where aesthetes of the world gather to take in the finest in furniture, ceramics, lighting, and interior design. And, as they have in previous years, car companies are crashing the party.

And why not? Considering how much time the average person spends in traffic these days, the interior design of your car should get the same attention and care as your living room.

Range Rover knows this, which is why the brand came to Milan Design Week with an exhibit called “Traces.” It explores the British marque’s Bespoke personalization service — which offers near limitless options for the company’s most discerning and deep-pocketed clients — by immersing visitors in spaces that envelop the senses in colour, material, and moods.

“Milan Design Week is one of the most important moments in the global design calendar, bringing leaders across an array of fields together to experience and inspire contemporary design leadership,” explained Martin Limpert, global managing director of Range Rover. “‘Traces’ is an invitation to celebrate Range Rover’s craft‑led personalization not as a process but as a deeply emotional experience, shaped by memory, place and the instinct for beauty.”

To that end, the exhibit designed in collaboration with London- and Paris-based Storey Studio, features three distinct rooms that function as complete, cohesive experiences. That’s the same studio is behind pop-ups and installations for Loro Piana, Belmond, Prada, Nike, Georg Jensen and Hermès.

In case you’re not in Milan this week, here’s what you’re missing out on from Range Rover’s “Traces” three-room installation:

• The first chapter, Memory and Colour, “immerses guests in a film directed by Felipe Sanguinetti, the Buenos Aires‑born and Paris‑based filmmaker whose work spans art, dance, fashion and music for clients including Chanel, Louis Vuitton and the Royal Opera House. Projected across four walls and reflected in surrounding mirrors to create an infinite spatial effect, the film traces memories from Sanguinetti’s Argentine roots to his life as a creative, each anchored by a distinct hue.”

• The second chapter, Memory and Motif, “moves into a more intimate environment, where four commissioned artists have created illustrations from their memories of Milan. The Range Rover Bespoke Materiality team has in turn created original embroidery artworks in response to each illustration. The works, inspired by illustrations from Hvass and Hannibal, Lisa Rampilli, Petra Borner, and Jules Julien are presented in champagne gold mirrored vitrines set within columns, the mirrored interiors multiplying each piece into an infinite reflection.”

• The third and final chapter, Memory and Material, “reveals the Pearl of Tay, a one-of-a-kind Range Rover Bespoke commission inspired by the freshwater pearl of the River Tay in Scotland. The space is designed as a kind of landscape — black gravel underfoot, pearlescent undulating fins running the length of the ceiling in reference to water, and full‑length mirrored vitrines either side housing 14 objects curated by Bard, the Edinburgh‑based shop and gallery of Scottish craft and design.”

After going on such an intense journey, visitors can unwind — and take a break from the infinite hustle and bustle of Design Week — at a serene café next to the installation. Furniture partner GUBI supplied the café’s Pierre Paulin’s F300 Lounge Chair, Daumiller Chairs, Obello Lamps, and more.

Frankly, it’s about time. Automobiles do belong in the same conversation as any other great work of industrial design. In many ways, cars are (by far, actually) the most ambitious, most complex, most impressive works in the whole field.

As traditional car shows like Paris, Detroit, and Geneva continue to disappear off the annual automotive calendar, we love to see cars infiltrating other events in the broader cultural landscape. Cars shouldn’t be confined to car shows. In the real world, after all, they’re part of the very fabric of our cities. They’re rolling sculptures, third places, smartphones-on-wheels, gridlock-causing appliances and so much more. Putting cars in a place like Milan Design Week, or CES, or Art Basel, lets the world see the automobiles in a broader context. We don’t know about you, but all this certainly gives us a new appreciation for the work that goes into making that lump of metal in our driveway.

So we’ll see you next year in Milan!

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