Benvenuto a Salone Del Mobile! This week, Milan played host to its annual furniture fair, Milan Design Week—but really, it’s more than just that. It’s a celebration of diaphanous, boundaryless concepts of design, taste, and style from all over the world. And with each new year, the fashion world makes itself more known. People who gather to toast the debut of a brand’s new drinks cabinet or teapot collection, and who can find endless possibilities to innovative around lamps, have very different entry points into how best to dress. Street style, then, is as eclectic as you would expect.
Schedules were jam packed, with guests traversing the stalls of the vast Milan Design Week fair as well as its off-shoots in studios, palazzos, store boutiques, and private apartments all over the city. As the sun set on a balmier-through-the-week Milano, aperitivo was shared—grab the champagne and conceptual hor d’oeuvres tray quickly—and groups filed into local trattorias to debrief over ossobuco and tiramisu. Later, the still standing would rave to Björk in the park with Vans or hit Stone Island Sound’s impressive audio installation at Capsule Plaza. From the day’s first studio appointment to a nightcap negroni at Bar Basso, Design Week attendees had to dress smartly.
“I came across this meme that said Design Week is that one time of year reserved for people who dress exclusively in black, always have an obscure book peeking out of their coat pocket, and wear sunglasses 24/7. Honestly, I get it,” says Francesca Faccani, Vogue Italia’s news and lifestyle editor. “Milanese style is a constant negotiation between your emotions and the perpetually gray sky. During Design Week, forget the sunny florals of fashion week or the pastel elegance of those Instagram accounts devoted to scuire—the effortlessly chic Milanese ladies of a certain age—because Design Week belongs to the aesthetes, the intellectuals, and the underdogs of style. Tucked away like the best installations hidden in private courtyards and maisons, this is their moment to step into the light.”
While fashion weeks across the world consider their purpose, and opportunities for new fashion design talent ever constricts, it is in more creatively open spaces like Milan Design Week that perspectives on style and expression feel most interesting. It’s why certain people and brands are gravitating to events outside of Fashion Month. “We chose Design Week to break [away from] what we are seeing is more of a transactional fashion week,” says Reece Crisp, who is buying and creative director at luxury independent concept store LN-CC, London based with an office in Milan. The store held an intimate dinner with Milanese interiors, design, and furniture company NM3 in the new Galleria Montegani space over Design Week. “Design feels more about creating—it’s not bound to a seasonal calendar, but more a timeline that gives you a year to culminate and curate. Fashion week has a place, but more and more we see the commercials becoming more important across all facets of the business, not just the product. Design Week gives brands the space to be who they want to be.”
