Salone and the city: Nic Monisse wraps up Milan Design Week 2026

Milan Design Week wrapped up today – an event that’s almost impossible to fully absorb. Across seven days, new furniture was launched, global project deals were struck and conversations about the future of design filled the Salone del Mobile fairground as well as the city’s showrooms, cafés, restaurants and bars. It was a collision of creativity and commerce which we unpack in this weekend’s special newsletter. Here are a few key takeaways from my week in the Lombard capital. 

Sunday
Landing at Linate first thing Sunday morning almost always makes you feel as if you’re behind the eight ball during Design Week. Thankfully my first appointment was with Sophie Lou Jacobsen at Disco Aperitivo (see “The Treat” below). The designer is renowned for looking at the importance of using well-designed objects to ground us in daily routines. “The point for me is to create something that is a little bit out of the norm,” says Jacobsen. “When people are using them, they’re really paying attention to what they’re doing, a forced engagement and ritual are created from that.”

Monday
On the eve of the opening of the Salone del Mobile trade fair – an event whose participants, events and connected activities generated €278m in 2025 – its organisers welcomed a delegation of designers, journalists and industry leaders to a performance at La Scala. Kicking off the evening was Maria Porro, Salone del Mobile’s president, who addressed the current global political, security and trade turbulence. “Design can contribute to peace as a daily practice,” said Porro, evoking 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field – and this week, let that field be design. Let’s build a better world together.” A reminder that Milan Design Week is as much about giving meaning as it is about making money.

Tuesday
USM, Snøhetta and artist Annabelle Schneider offered a critique of culture with their installation “Renaissance of the Real” (pictured). The work aimed to draw visitors away from the digital world by creating a womb-like structure with sunlight streaming through bulbous, permeable white walls. “It’s about critiquing the feeling of how we use technology,” said Schneider. “The installation looks great on the phone but it feels different in person. We’re used to navigating flat, perfect, digital images but this is about tactility and the imperfect, and the moment of surprise that you can’t capture in the digital.”

Wednesday
Meaning was also invoked by Deyan Sudjic, who curated an exhibition for Rosewood called Objects that Speak, a conversation continued with Andrea Branzi. The showcase celebrated the late Branzi, a pioneer of the Italian radical design movement, who challenged mass production’s erasure of individuality, and championed the notion that design is not just about form and function but about creating objects that carry meaning, tell stories, and reflect and critique culture.

Thursday
Design can provide the backdrop for life to play out. This year a host of musicians took to stages across Milan to embody this, including Honey Dijon, James Blake and a stellar line-up at the Miu Miu Literary Club that featured London-based Ider and French-Senegalese singer-songwriter Anaiis.

Friday
Jil Sander’s “Reference Library” offered a moment of reflection. The installation presented a curated list of books selected by leading creatives, which visitors could leaf through (if they wore the elegant white gloves provided). I’m going to be reading The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard. “It’s probably the best book about furniture ever written,” said architect Jack Self, who selected it for the collection. “It describes the home as an exotic ecosystem where things and people coevolve in space over time.”

Saturday
As I headed for home, I reflected on L’Appartement, an exhibition imagined by Antoine Billore for L’Artisan Parfumeur. The Paris-based Billore created a Lombard home for himself in a Milanese apartment, importing his own furniture and dotting the space with personal artefacts. Despite its temporary nature – it closed today – it was a residence filled with memories, personality and humanity.

Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. For more reflections on Salone del Mobile, tune in to this week’s episode of ‘Monocle On Design’.

More from Milan:
– Milan Design Week thinks outside the box as the industry reacts to a fractured zeitgeist

– How Milan’s central Brera neighbourhood became a premier creative hub

– A photographic tribute to Milan’s sciure: Icons of style, power, and cultural legacy