Monocle Weekend
Edition: Saturday

The halls of Milan’s Salone del Mobile are filled with the latest big-hitting products from the giants of the furniture world but in one corner of the fair there is magic to be found among lesser-known talent. SaloneSatellite is dedicated to designers under the age of 35 and allows budding design stars to parade their wares before an international audience. This 19th edition was packed with products that caught our eye: Studio Philipp Beisheim’s inflatable table; Bouillon’s heated ceramic stool; and playful porcelain lamps by 27-year-old Norwegian Stine Aas. “We’re in close contact with producers at Satellite,” says Aas. “So it’s very good for young designers who are making prototypes and want to collaborate with bigger brands.”

Ask a casual drinker to name a saké brand and chances are they will come up short; more so than, say, with a good whisky. One of Japan’s most famous former football players Hidetoshi Nakata has been trying to tackle this lack of brand recognition since his retirement from the game. After travelling around Japan meeting artisanal makers of the rice wine, Nakata set up his own “N” label saké three years ago, made by the Takagi Shuzo brewery in Yamagata prefecture. His latest move as international saké ambassador is a collaboration with Hong Kong’s Kee Club to launch Koko, a Japanese bar and restaurant in Central that serves Nakata’s own brand of saké alongside some of his favourite tipples from around Japan.

A little sunshine can be all it takes for people to start talking holidays so springtime Rome made the perfect backdrop for this week’s Confimprese conference on Italian tourism, hosted in the opulent former national assembly hall Via del Collegio Romano. In addition to lively panel discussions with business owners, insiders and some of Italy’s notable columnists, the event also presented the latest figures from US-based researchers Nielsen on the health of the industry. According to the survey the most popular spots in the bel paese are still cities, with 83 per cent of travellers heading to Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice and Naples. Confimprese president Mario Resca says that there are some clear differences between tourists: “The most critical? The Japanese. The most enthusiastic? Americans.”

Dallas is perhaps best known in the US as the place where JFK was assassinated. But the so-called City of Hate is seeking an altogether different image by sprucing up its downtown core and arts district in recent years and emerging as an outward-looking centre for art in the South. This week Dallas welcomes art collectors and 97 galleries from 17 nations with the eighth edition of the Dallas Art Fair. Featuring art in all of its guises, the annual fair is a switched-on offering that has managed to attract galleries from far afield. Among the international galleries hoping to break into the regional art market is Dubai’s Carbon 12, which is showcasing a series of enticing and whimsical canvases by Austrian painter Bernhard Buhmann.

Tune in live to Monocle 24 to catch up with the team in Vienna for Monocle’s Quality of Life Conference.

Vienna is a city that bridges eastern and western Europe with panache. It has long been the melting pot of Europe so it’s easy to feel at home here – especially with our fully illustrated, 148-page hardback book as your guide. Published by Gestalten, The Monocle Travel Guide to Vienna is available now at The Monocle Shop.