Fuorisalone proves that fashion is no mere accessory to Milan Design Week
As the presence of major luxury fashion houses at Milan Design Week continues to grow, their contribution has been subtly evolving into an integral part of the industry beyond the fair grounds.
Fuorisalone might not be a fashion week but it’s one of the style set’s favourite places to flex its design credentials away from the runway. Over the past decade, the annual event has become unmissable for denizens of the fashion industry, with houses clocking that the showcase is a chance to engage with design-astute audiences while enhancing their cultural cachet.
Last year, the sector’s presence at Milan Design Week peaked with more than 40 fashion houses staging events. Hermès, Prada, Miu Miu, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta and Loro Piana are all returning for the latest iteration. (In 2025, the latter was the most talked-about label, thanks to its collaboration with Milanese design firm Dimorestudio.)
This time, Milan-based brand Jil Sander joins the fray, making its Fuorisalone debut with Reference Library, an exhibition of 60 books chosen by 60 creatives that will be presented on chrome lecterns, to be perused by visitors wearing white gloves. Staged at the brand’s showroom near Sforzesco Castle, the show is masterminded by its new creative director, Simone Bellotti.
“Salone del Mobile is the moment when the city becomes a gathering point for people who care deeply about how things are made,” Bellotti tells Monocle. “Jil Sander has always been defined by deliberation, the refinement of cuts, the perfection of details. These are values that the design world shares. Our customer is someone who lives with intention, who chooses things carefully and keeps them. The overlap between a person who appreciates exceptional design and someone who wears Jil Sander isn’t incidental.”
A recent report commissioned by PR agency Karla Otto and conducted by marketing platform Lefty found that, in 2025, the fashion category represented a 56 per cent “share of voice” (the industry term for the proportion of market conversation on social media) over the course of Milan Design Week. To put that into perspective, it recorded 30 per cent for the design category, while media, lifestyle, food and beverage, automobile, beauty, technology, jewellery and finance shared the remaining 14 per cent.
“People want to live inside a brand, not just wear it,” says Lewis Alexander, the founder of London-based strategic advisory firm Alexander & Co, who notes that for fashion groups, having a presence in the interiors category chimes with shareholder logic. “Apparel has a ceiling; interiors offer high margins and cultural resonance. Once fashion dressed the body; now it dresses life.”
However, in 2026, there are signs of a mood shift. Having enjoyed a high profile at Milan Design Week in recent years, several fashion houses are notable by their absence, including The Row, Yves Saint Laurent and Loewe. The industry’s representation at Salone mostly comprises brands with more firmly established footholds in design, such as Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Fendi Casa and Ralph Lauren.
The fashion sector continues to endure a slowdown, while recalibrating after a year of creative-director switch-ups and executive reshuffles. Budgets that might have been allocated for extracurricular events such as Milan Design Week are being reconsidered. “Every designer who comes into a label has a different idea of what it should look like – not to mention the fact that they need to make six or seven collections a year,” says Lisa Pomerantz, the brand director of New York-based firm LFP Collective. “Then they’re supposed to figure out home collections too? It can’t just be an afterthought. You can’t put something in the shop window if it doesn’t legitimately belong there. People are getting wise to it. ‘One and done’ doesn’t work any more because there’s too much noise.”
This coincides with a change in popular opinion among the design industry. Somewhat at odds with the event’s open-door policy that has democratised access to elite design circles over the years, the Karla Otto report found an increasing “tension between the concept of public access and industry intimacy”. Two camps have emerged: one that thinks that the presence of fashion brands is resulting in a kind of industry dilution and another that sees the value of attracting new demographics.
“There’s a sniffiness about the idea that fashion is barging into design’s temple,” says Alexander, who notes that there’s a “distaste for houses that just slap a logo on a chair”. Done well, however, he sees opportunities for brands to engage with a new generation. “Craft is now positioned as proof of durability and integrity – and that message lands with younger consumers,” he adds. “For them, it’s often their first brush with heritage and craft. If they discover Hermès wallpaper before they discover the Bauhaus, that’s not a bad entry point.”
Like Jil Sander, fashion brands without a lifestyle category are tapping into a growing appetite for intellectual enrichment and experience rather than prioritising new products. “Thinking and engagement – or to be able to think deeply and engage without distraction – are new aspirational cues,” says Lucie Greene, the founder of Light Years Consulting. “It also sits with the Generation Z curator mindset of mining cultural artefacts. Unearthing books and key texts outside the digital space sets them apart.”
In collaboration with Spanish architecture office Ensamble Studio, Issey Miyake is returning to Milan for its 10th year with The Paper Log: Shell and Core, a project repurposing by-products of the brand’s pleated clothing. Elsewhere, Miu Miu is back with the third installation of its Literary Club, while its parent brand, Prada, returns for its fifth symposium, titled Prada Frames, in partnership with Milanese design duo Formafantasma.
“Prada is a great example of a brand that is never literal,” says Pomerantz. “What Miuccia Prada [the executive director of the Prada Group] is saying is, ‘My brand is built on intellectual conversations.’ Why wouldn’t she want to intersect with culture and have a talk? That’s very her.” According to Greene, a new focus for fashion brands taking part in events such as Fuorisalone is “neo-cerebralism”, which puts the emphasis on substance over simple brand experiences. “It’s linked to artificial intelligence and a focus on human skills, artistry, intuition and critical thinking,” adds Greene. “It’s making us look to history, philosophy and art from both the past and present to make sense of things, especially in this period of massive global change and disruption.”
