Salone del Mobile (Milan Design Week) arrives each April in Milan like a well-timed hallucination — not exactly real, not entirely dream, and only possible in a city like this. The streets are dripping in trench coats, tote bags, and Aperol; there’s a low hum of curated conversations in courtyards and cloisters; and, for one glorious week, the world’s design faithful — polished and loose-limbed in equal measure — move across town like little bees to this garden of design that comes almost as quickly as it goes.
For those of us who think, work, and live in design, Salone del Mobile is an annual reset. The trip finds me deep in planning our work on Decorex Africa, 100% Design Africa, and Capitec handmadeAFRICA. It’s a time to recalibrate the eye and be reminded of what’s possible when the best of design thinking comes together. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a time to confirm that what we’re doing on this continent — in dusty studios and freighted workshops and spontaneous WhatsApp collectives — can belong to the same conversation. Not in mimicry, but as its own complete, complex contribution.
My creative partner Alan Hayward and I moved through Milan in an orchestrated daze: we had mapped our days in advance (one must), but still left space for the city to surprise us. We tried to skip the massive brand showcases, and their consequent queues, and zoom in on magical, flickering interventions. It’s almost impossible to choose a “10 best” of the things we loved, but here are the projects that linger.
1. Atelier de Troupe’s “Intermezzo”
Just hours after landing, we slipped behind an unmarked Milanese doorway into “Intermezzo” — Atelier de Troupe’s moody, near-theatrical installation with Studioutte and CC-Tapis. It unfolded like a film still: smoke, soft blonde light, and pieces that lingered somewhere between scene and set. Lacquered wood, velvet, pony hair — all speaking in hushed tones. A perfectly elegant start to the week: restrained, cinematic, and quietly unforgettable.
2. The shape of the week
Milan, in the end, becomes a shape in your body — a soft ache in your calves, a sort of overexposed glow behind your eyes. Alan and I would end each day delirious, wondering not what to copy but what to hold on to. What could be transplanted. What could be translated. What it would take to build a similar gravity in Cape Town, in Joburg. Not a replica, but our own kind of magnetism. We came home with a renewed conviction that Africa’s design future is not somewhere far off. It’s here.
3. TM Leader Contract: Lumo, luxe & high-voltage harmony
Spanish brand TM Leader Contract’s “Symbiosis” installation felt less like a showroom and more like a nightclub — all lumo tones, high-performance fabrics, and pulsing light. It was a maximalist vision of the future, where nature and tech weren’t in quiet dialogue but rather jamming together under strobe lights. Think high-performance textures, metallic automotive-paint finishes, colour shifts, and surfaces that looked like they were competing in a 1980s aerobics class. Loud, theatrical, and slightly surreal — and all the more memorable for it.
4. “Can You Imagine” by Secondome
In a week of over-articulated design, “Can You Imagine?” stood out for its softness — a lyrical group show at Rossana Orlandi, curated by Federica Sala (who joins us this year as a featured speaker at Decorex in Joburg for the annual Future Talks programme) for Secondome. The gallery itself is hallowed design ground, and so it was extraordinary to watch imagination take precedence over purpose. Serena Confalonieri’s vases, made with Ocean Sole from discarded flip-flops, felt especially buoyant — part sea creature, part toy, part protest. They didn’t explain themselves. They invited you to float. Confalonieri’s work was a standout in general across Milan this year.
5. Established & Sons: Gelato & Tiki
In a week notorious for sensory overload, Established & Sons offered something altogether more elegant: a curated breadcrumb trail across Milan, with its reissued Gelato and Tiki lamps lighting the way. Rather than fight for space in the cacophony, the brand quietly, and cleverly, embedded itself into the city’s rhythm — here, a lamp glowing in the window of a neighbourhood café; there, another perched like sculpture in a hidden design bookstore. The accompanying Guide to Milan: How to Make It Through Design Week became less a promo piece and more a love letter to the city — a masterclass in placing product where it lives and breathes. By swapping spectacle for subtlety, Established & Sons reminded us that good design doesn’t need a pedestal — just the right light, in the right place, at the right time.
6. Behind closed doors: Giuseppe Porcelli’s “Garçonnière”
Some of the week’s most memorable experiences weren’t listed in the official guides. In Giuseppe Porcelli’s quiet Città Studi apartment, the designer staged “Garçonnière” — a debut furniture collection set within a homoerotic domestic fantasy. Moody, textural, and rich with subtext, the space inverted the idea of the bachelor pad into something tender, queer, and sharply curated. Fortuny fabrics pooled beside sculptural furniture and paintings by Alex Foxton in a space more memoir than showroom. Unforgettable.
7. Into the belly of the Salone
After days spent tracing the fringes — the off-site shows, secret apartments, quiet experiments — we finally stepped into the main halls of Salone del Mobile, all 750,000 m2 of them. And there, amid the scale and sheen, “Craft West Africa” offered an unexpected treat: a pocket of home. Curated by Studio Lani’s Lani Adeoye in the Salone Satellite section, the exhibition brought together work from across the region — carved wood, woven mats, lost-wax bronzes — each piece grounded in tradition yet firmly part of the global design language. The collection was thoughtful and deeply moving, much like Adeoye herself. It was Africa fully present — and perfectly placed.
8. Alessi’s “The Last Pot”
Tucked into the hush of the Biblioteca Ostinata (the tiniest and most charming little bookstore) Alessi’s “The Last Pot” was more requiem than product showcase — a meditative installation exploring the urn as the final design object. Eleven cinerary urns by masters such as Philippe Starck, Naoto Fukasawa, and David Chipperfield were arranged in a simple line, flickering with absence, presence, and the peculiar beauty of endings.
9. Kartell’s Red room of the future
Deeper into the Salone beast we moved between many brands that flirted with futurism. It’s impossible to list them all here. Kartell, however, committed fully, transforming its stand into a glowing red lab of ideas. At its heart: the “Grande Panda Kartell”, a design-meets-automotive concept two years in the making with Fiat. It was witty and unmistakably Kartell, a beautiful coming together of two Italian icons.
10. “Slow Roads” by LRNCE
A bit further out, Marrakech-based LRNCE unveiled “Slow Roads”, the studio’s deeper dive into furniture. Aside from the delight of experiencing the studio again after a recent visit to its spaces in Morocco, the pieces — hand-crafted, painterly, irregular in all the right ways — celebrated the tactile imperfection of Moroccan craft along with the designer’s instinctive modernity. Where Porcelli’s space was charged and confessional, LRNCE’s was sunlit and sensuous. Together, they reminded us of what happens when design dares to be personal, and of the importance of African design in the bigger design scene.
From the July edition of Wanted, 2025
