Order has resumed in Milano as Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week are back to their April calendar slot and the queues are as long as the sun is hot. With the intersection between fashion, craft and architecture an ever-increasingly sweet spot for brands to flex their collaborative muscle, the fashion industry was also out in force to celebrate it.
Bottega Veneta enlisted the esteemed Gaetano Pesce – its recent show-set collaborator – to take over its Via Montenapoleone store with a draped-resin grotto; Dior invited Philippe Starck to expand on his inaugural 2022 ode to the world of couture; Giorgio Armani opened up his exquisite Via Borgonuovo HQ for the first time to the public; and Etro revealed the fruits of creative director Marco di Vincenzo’s Insta-affinity with the artist Amy Lincoln.
Here, in an ongoing round-up, is the Wallpaper* edit of the best fashion moments at Milan Design Week 2023.
Best of: fashion brands at Milan Design Week 2023
Loewe
Paper, twine, shearling, leather, emergency insulating foil: Jonathan Anderson’s beloved Welsh stick chairs got a serious makeover for the ‘Loewe Chairs’ installation at Palazzo Isimbardi. Comprising 30 designs (22 of which were sourced from antique dealers and the remaining eight made new for the event), the project brought together expert artisans from both within the Loewe fold and around the world to transform the chair from something humble into something more haute. An avid collector of the stick chair himself, Anderson holds the project close to his heart. ‘I’ve always been obsessed by them; I think they're just such incredible pieces of design,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘I was like, “Well, how can we take them and use them as a canvas and then fuse the past and the present?” There’s nothing more emotional that when you sit on something or you use something, because it’s about how we interact with something.’
All 30 chairs are for sale, with many already boasting a red sticker by midway through the opening-night cocktail. Not for sale (disappointingly, to many) were the stone structures forming the centrepiece of the Salone presentation. Originally used to form the foundation of traditional Spanish granaries the ‘hórreos’ are each different shape depending on the region from which they came. Here, mushroom caps transformed them into toadstools, another emblem from Anderson’s repertoire, this time his childhood stationery.
Missoni
Bringing together Missoni and panettone, two of Lombardy’s most celebrated global exports, was always going to mean a good time at Salone. Missoni Home creative director Alberto Caliri looked to the famous confection to introduce a new shape to the brand’s repertoire – and threw in some doughnuts for good measure. ‘The idea is to work with simple shapes and remember a young, happy life,’ says the designer of the ‘Ciambellone’ and oscillating ‘Panettone’ poufs (all of which were fully occupied by enthusiastic guests). ‘The doughnuts and the panettone are normal to see in Milano,’ he says, adding that he wants to bring ‘a bit of magic to the concrete’. The structures themselves were covered in the house’s signature zigzag jacquards, multicoloured towelling, all-over mirrored mosaic, lacquered resins, and the house’s new motif, the ‘Nastri’ fabric. Comprising six colour variations that combine to create a 3D effect, it stretched from the seating to the new ‘Nastri’ tableware collection, also unveiled this Salone and just as much a joy to behold
Armani / Casa
To say the enthusiasm for Giorgio Armani opening his Palazzo Orsini HQ to the public for the first time was palpable would be something of an understatement: the Via Borgonuovo venue counted 1,000 visitors in the first two-and-a-half hours of opening on Tuesday (18 April 2023). They were there to see Armani/Casa’s first ever outdoor collection, a compilation of the ‘Terence’ sofa, the ‘Timothy’ sunlounger, the ’Thomas’ dining table, the ’Turner’ and ‘Terry’ side tables and the ‘Thelma’ folding director’s chair. Carved from teak using a technique that resembles traditional wicker furniture and finished with the multidimensional jacquards for which Armani/Casa is famed, they were positioned in the magical palazzo gardens reached through the porticoes of the 17th-century courtyard. Upstairs at the Palazzo, guests were welcomed into the Appiani-frescoed rooms usually used for haute couture fittings, an apt space to unveil the ‘Antoinette’ dressing table and ‘Camilla’ desk in their new mother-of-pearl renderings. The collection was finished off with the accessories so beloved of the house. This year, tarot cards featuring Armani-clad models and mirrored castanet key rings delivered the annual dose of witty insouciance.
Prada
For the second year in a row, Mrs Prada asked design agency Formafantasma to curate Prada Frames, a symposium that invites the brilliant minds of architects, doctors, designers, psychologists, anthropologists, activists and experts in multiple fields to share their research on the relationship between design and the environment. This year, the theme was ‘Materials in Flux’, where the subject of waste – its origins, its value chain, and its transformative properties – was unpacked in an interrogation of its complexities. Using as a springboard the work of British anthropologist Tim Ingold and his findings that materials are endlessly evolving entities, the man himself kicked off proceedings at the Laveni and Avati-designed Teatro Filodrammatici – with 1960s interiors by Luigi Caccia Dominioni – introducing waste as matter in constant transformation. In the following sessions, waste as a lifeline in global material flows and its role in value systems as well as design was further evaluated and explored.
Dior
To the Palazzo Citterio, where Philippe Starck presented the next verse in his annual ode to Monsieur Dior and the house’s famous ‘Medallion’ chair. This year, Dior by Starck riffed on the ‘Miss Dior’ chair the designer created for last year’s outing with the ‘Miss Dior Sweet Chair’ and the ‘Monsieur Dior’ armchair which he described as being ‘perfectly balanced through these essential notions of gravity and lightness, of yin and yang’. Presented in aluminium, pink, black and fluorescent orange toile de Jouy, the notion came to life with a circular sculptural installation devised in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective that saw the chairs rise and fall in opposing directions as if weightless puppetry. ‘Miss Dior and Monsieur Dior, Catherine and Christian Dior, the sister and the brother, the chair and the armchair, is the story of a sublime complementary duality,’ Starck says of his stimulus. To complete the family, occasional tables and stools were presented, also sculpted and finessed from aluminium. ‘Aluminium is the point zero from which everything is built, the idea of intelligence and purity of technology,’ says Starck. ‘The object as it is in its origin, its essence, without any dross.’
Bottega Veneta
As if Bottega Veneta’s Summer 2023 fashion show wasn’t already one for the history books – that leather lumberjack shirt, those calfskin jeans – its set design collaboration with design maestro Gaetano Pesce, has been immortalised with the duo’s Milan Design Week tie-up. Taking over the house’s entire Via Montenapoleone boutique, Pesce and his team were given creative carte blanche to construct a huge scaffold structure, under which they draped hand-painted canvas, sprayed it in situ with resin, and back-lit it so it became an immersive grotto. Entitled ‘Vieni a Vedere’, meaning ‘come and see’, it draws guests along a womb-like corridor, where Pesce’s first handbags (two extremely limited editions inspired by memories of two mountains meeting in his childhood) are born to the world.
Etro
Many an auspicious friendship has been made on Instagram by Marco de Vincenzo, Etro’s creative director. ‘It’s special, because you can find someone who is doing what's in your mind in a different way and it’s an authentic way to connect,’ he tells Wallpaper. A year into his helm at the Italian house famed for its paisley prints and luscious textiles, his recent scrolling saw him land on the page of New York-based painter Amy Lincoln. Drawn to her hypnotic dreamscapes, the designer asked her to work on six tapestry-inspired blankets for their collaboration ‘Woven Spectrum’, presented this week in the brand’s Brera boutique where every inch of every wall is covered in Lincoln’s brushstrokes. Describing their meeting as serendipitous, the pair talked of the positive tension between their mediums that helps ground their work. ‘If I focus too much on fashion, it means business, so sometimes to lose control and to look at something differently, reminds you that fashion is art,’ smiles de Vincenzo. ‘It's important as an artist to not be too influenced by market forces,’ adds Lincoln. ‘I think you want to be able to make enough money to actually live as an artist and be able to make your art, but you also need to make what you feel most connected to and what feels most important.’
Zegna
For the second year in a row, Miuccia Prada asked design agency Formafantasma to curate Prada Frames, a symposium that invites the brilliant minds of architects, doctors, designers, psychologists, anthropologists, activists and experts in multiple fields to share their research on the relationship between design and the environment. This year, the theme was ‘Materials in Flux’, where the subject of waste, its origins, its value chain, and its transformative properties were unpacked in an interrogation of its complexities. Using the work of British anthropologist Tim Ingold and his findings that materials are endlessly evolving entities as a springboard, the man himself kicked off proceedings at the Laveni and Avati-designed Teatro Filodrammatici – with 1960s interiors by Luigi Caccia Dominioni – introducing waste as matter in constant transformation. In the following sessions, waste as a lifeline in global material flows and its role in value systems as well as design was further evaluated and explored.
Stay tuned for more fashion moments at Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2023.
