For one week each year, the world’s most important furniture fair, Salone del Mobile and the accompanying Fuorisalone with its myriad of activations around interior and design, turn the city of Milan into the centre stage for industry people and design aficionados alike. First established in 1961, Milan Design Week now attracts over half a million global visitors flocking to the heart of Lombardy to see the latest from best-in-class interior and product design.
The event has become a steady fixture and significant cultural happening, spanning new product launches, installations, exhibitions, cross-cultural collaborations and events that merge art, design, and fashion – and that’s without taking into account the countless preview cocktails, private brand dinners and parties; the latter regularly taking place at legendary Bar Basso. 10 Magazine DE travelled to Milan to check out arguably the most important date in global design calendar. Here’s our edit of this year’s highlights…
Gucci Memoria
Held at Milan’s magnificent Chiostri di San Simpliciano, a 4th century cloister tucked away in the buzzing Brera district, Gucci presented Memoria, an exhibition curated by Demna tracing the House’s 105-year history. Upon entering the grounds, a big black installation revealed itself to be custom-built vending machines with an interactive element: a dispenser for canned beverages created by Gucci Giardino, the fashion house’s own café and cocktail bar in Florence. Each can featured a different distinct persona such as “Fashion Icon”, “Drama Queen”, “Super Incazzata”, and “Mega Pesantone”, capturing in a fun and tongue-in-cheek way the essence of Gucci’s La Familiga, a cast of characters representing the different facts of the house and a concept first introduced by Demna for his debut Gucci collection back in September 2025. The second part of the exhibition unfolded in the larger cloister with a lush and whimsical garden installation reimagining the house’s iconic Flora motif. All around the garden, twelve large tapestries were mounted on the walls, serving as a visual chronicle of the fashion house and depicting key creative eras – from the emergence of iconic designs such as the Jackie 1961 and Bamboo 1947 handbags to the defining moments of past creative directors inducing Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele and Sabato de Sarno, to the present with Demna Gvasalia.
Bocci Light as Medium
One of the appointments not to miss during Milan Design Week, Vancouver-based design studio, research lab and manufacturer Bocci invited guests for an opening cocktail at their historic Milan apartment, to reveal their latest showcase Light as Medium with new and reimagined works by Omer Arbel, curated by David Alhadeff. It marked the second collaboration between Arbel, co-founder and creative director of Bocci, and Alhadeff, founder of The Future Perfect, the Milan-based design gallery. Moving from one room to the next, in a surrounding that can only be described as magical and ethereal, the curation sequentially uncovered different light installations focussing on atmosphere, perception, movement, and experience over time. A wondrous interplay of rhythm and proportions, a perfect marriage of glass and light, where one installation is more impressive and enchanting than the next.
Prada Home Chawan Cabinet
At the Prada Home store located in Milan’s Quadrilatero fashion district, the fashion house unveiled their collaboration with Chicago-based and Tokoname-trained artist Theaster Gates. Titled Chawan Cabinet, the project featured a collection of delicate potteries consisting of editioned ceramic vessels and ceremonial forms. At the heart lies chawan, the tea bowl central to Japanese tea culture, alongside tea cups, sake cups and bottles – each unequivocally and charmingly unique with subtle variations. It spoke to moments of ritual, intimacy and serenity. The collection also featured ceramic sculptures reminiscent of Prada bags as well as a selection of vases resembling perfume bottles. The launch was accompanied by a hidden inner courtyard experience where guests were treated to a personal tea ceremony.
Image courtesy of DSL studio
6:AM Glass Over and Over and Over and Over
As one of the most anticipated events in the week’s schedule, and considered by some experts as “the best in the business”, Murano glass studio 6:AM took over the rationalist Piscina Romano venue in the Porta Venezia district for their exhibit Over and Over and Over and Over – a title referencing the significance of repetition in daily gestures and also artisanal glassmaking, with glass being a living, ever-changing material where the outcome is never the same. The exhibit examined the friction between control and surrender, structure versus the unexpected, and mass-production in opposition to uniqueness. At the heart of the exhibit was an ambitious and jaw-dropping Murano glass sculpture with both translucent and coloured blown glass cubes, the latter being the very ones created for the set design of Bottega Veneta’s Spring/Summer 2026 runway show, and now re-used for this year’s installation.
Jil Sander x Apartamento Reference Library
Jil Sander and Apartamento magazine offered a moment of calm and quiet amongst the perpetuous rush of Milan Design Week. Called Reference Library, the interactive installation brought together 60 books personally chosen from a plethora of creatives including writers, designers, artists, architects and filmmakers. Serving as a collection of personal references, the exhibit, designed by Milanese architecture practice studioutte, featured chrome lecterns equipped with delicate lights standing in rows upon which lay the different books to be explored and read – for which guests specifically received white gloves at the entrance. The installation is a counteract to an “age of skimming”, where “reading for pleasure is in serious decline, and the book has become something worth defending, an object you hold, that asks you to slow down and stay a while.” Contributors included Simone Bellotti (Il barone rampante by Italo Calvino), Celine Song (Perfume by Patrick Süskind), Hania Rani (A Month in Sienna by Hisham Matar) Jasper Morrison (The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty by Soetsu Yanagi), Lykke Li (Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramović), Ronan Bouroullec (L’idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky), Laila Gohar (The Prophet by Khalil Gibran), and Sofia Coppola (Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima).
From left: Villa Pestarini, photography Luigi Fiano; Supaform, photography Piergiorgio Sorgetti
Alcova
Alcova is the recurring hub spotlighting the works of international talents encompassing established brands, independent designers and renowned design schools. Taking place in a new location this year, and always with a more off-city center location, the showcase was held on the vast premises of the Baggio Military Hospital, using different on-site buildings – like two hangars, the former kitchen or laundry room – and the outdoor spaces to display the works of the participants. A staggering 131 exhibitors took part in this year’s group exhibition in this extraordinary venue usually inaccessible to the public – and it is more than worth it to really take your time, explore every little corner and give attention to each participant’s work. The event also featured talks hosted by Design Hotels, on probably the coolest conversation pit ever seen designed by creative studio Supaform. Alcova is a must when going to Milan Design Week, which is why hour-long queues might occur on open-to-public days.
Along with the Baggio Military Hospital, Alcova also took over Villa Pestarini, the only private residence in Milan to be conceived by Franco Albini, a key figure of Italian Rationalism. The entire villa featured works by various designers and studios engaging with Albini’s legacy, as well as a selected display of prominent protagonists of contemporary design, such as Italian designer and architect Patricia Urquiola.
Hermès Collections for the Home
French heritage maison Hermès revealed its latest collections for the home during Milan Design Week, at the La Pelota venue in Brera. Brought to life in a light-filled installation consisting of various parallelepipeds made of plaster and beechwood, they made for perfect pedestals highlighting the house’s latest objects: colourful hand-woven cashmere and linen throws, multicoloured baskets in perforated Epsom calfskin and embellished with stitched leather appliqués, metal vases in leather cases with geometrical designs, hand-hammered metal jugs, a sculptural vase in a black horsehair sleeve and Swift calfskin edged with lizard reminiscent of Hermès Toupet bag, a centerpiece made of palladium-finish metal and lacing in Chamkila goatskin, and the Stadium d’Hermès Veneto Carrara marble table designed by British duo Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby.
Photography Andrea Ferrari
Interni Venosta Interno Italiano
One of the most magical elements of Milan Design Week is the ability to access private residences, palazzi, villas and historical buildings that are usually off-limits to the public eye. Getting to step inside and have a look around these architectural gems and impeccably furnished spaces should – and will – make every design fan’s heart skip a beat with joy. A wonderful example of this privilege was made possible by Interni Venosta for their Interno Italiano showcase, located in the private residence designed by famed Italian architect and designer Osvaldo Borsani – as the very first time ever to be open to the public. The result was a harmonious blend of Interni Venosta’s new collection and the rich historic legacy of Borsani’s oeuvre. The focal point of the apartment and veritable pièce de résistance turned out to be the fireplace nook, undoubtedly the most-photographed space during Design Week.
Prada Frames In Sight
Prada Frames, the annual multidisciplinary symposium by Prada, and conceptualised by highly in-demand research and design studio extraordinaire, Formafantasma, returned for its fifth edition. Titled In Sight and focussing on the topic of image-making as a cultural, political, and material force, the event consisted of several lectures, performative guided tours and musical performances at the complex of Santa Maria delle Grazie – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the very church where Leonardo painted his legendary masterpiece, The Last Supper. Initiated in 2022, Prada Frames is a project commissioned by the fashion house with a scientific, educational and informative approach, each with a specific theme. Each edition revolves around a specific theme.
Miu Miu Literary Club
Under the direction of Miuccia Prada, Miu Miu held its fourth edition of the Miu Miu Literary Club at Circolo Filologico Milanese, inviting selected speakers to a series of talks and lectures on specific topics. For this year’s iteration, “Politics of Desire” became the base of discussion and debate, focussing on sexuality, desire, and consent. The conversations drew from the works of both Nobel prize-winning French author Annie Ernaux with A Girl’s Story, as well as Changes: A Love Story by one of the most crucial voices in African literature and key figure of post-colonial feminist thought, Ama Ata Aidoo. Invited speakers and guests included British writer and curator Lou Stoppard; French-German journalist and author Annabelle Hirsch; prominent feminist thinker, and author Lea Melandri; Irish-born, New York-based author and journalist Megan Nolan, among others. For the first time, Miu Miu Literary Club also hosted a “Curated Library” for consultation and inspiration as well as an open-to-public day where the venue was transformed into a reading room for visitors to read or explore the selection of books from the library curated by Rosi Braidotti.
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