Bright, bold and bustling, Design Miami 2025 celebrates colour and creativity
When the first edition of Design Miami took place in 2005, the fair dedicated to collectable design might have been considered, at best, a quirky sideshow to the glitzy Art Basel Miami. A space for the design industry where rare antiques mingle with contemporary pieces that do away with the restrictive adage that design is where form meets function. At worst, the fair could have been a flash-in-the-pan event in a city that has the quality of a pastel-hued tropical fever dream. Two decades later, Design Miami is now a global phenomenon that tours the world to put on showcases of the weird and wonderful in Paris, Seoul, Los Angeles, Basel and, in 2027, Dubai.
This week the fair returned to its base in Miami’s Pride Park for a final victory lap of a milestone year that will come to a close on Sunday. And it’s the biggest edition to date: more than 80 exhibitors gathered under the curatorial theme “Make. Believe”, an apt rallying cry in a city with an uninhibited disposition, where anything goes when it comes to aesthetics.
“Miami is fun, sunny, bright, tropical and energetic – and it all materialises at the fair,” Design Miami CEO Jen Roberts tells The Monocle Minute. “We see design as a tool for betterment and positive change in the world. It has been an extraordinary trajectory. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a clear path for young designers coming out of school. Now you can be part of incubator shows, get picked up by a gallery, come to Design Miami and be commissioned for industrial projects.”
Highlights from this year’s edition include French designer Mathieu Lehanneur’s Palazzo display, where a chartreuse Familyscape sofa comes with a handbag-shaped cushion that can be unzipped to store those pesky remote controls. New York-based gallery Superhouse brought some 1980s radical optimism with its presentation, American Art Furniture: 1980-1990, featuring colourful pieces from designers including Dan Friedman, Michele Oka Doner and Pippa Garner. Italian luxury fashion house Fendi tapped Argentinian designer and artist Conie Vallese to create pieces alongside the brand’s ateliers. The result is an enticing recreation of a salotto (living room), with an artful pairing of brass flowers on chair legs and a folding screen, combined with panels of baby-blue and banana-yellow leather.
Some of the design pieces might prompt a smile. Others will make you question how far people will go to explore the limits of bad taste. But what’s sure is that the world is only now waking up to the value of collectable design, with Salone del Mobile set to enter the space at its next edition in spring 2026 and Pad drawing attention in Paris and London. The rise of collectable design has only just begun and, in hindsight, it makes perfect sense that it would take root in Miami. Carefree and self-assured, the city offers a joyful alternative to beige minimalism and the repetitive results borne out of a function-first mentality. So, unbutton your Cuban-collar shirt, grab a cocktail and make peace with the bizarre. Welcome to Miami.
Grace Charlton is Monocle’s associate editor of design and fashion. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Read next: Five collectable design trends for the year ahead, as seen at Design Miami
