Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There are only so many showrooms of sofas one can visit. For design lovers at Milan, the desire is for something exciting, something creative and immersive. Increasingly, such thrills come from fashion brands. Big names from Loewe to Louis Vuitton have taken over historic locations with exhibitions of top creative talent and dramatic scenography, delivering experiences in which the worlds of fashion, design and art collide. Dior filled an 18th-century palace with a Philippe Starck-designed “carousel of chairs”. Bottega Veneta decorated a 19th-century former theatre with mountainous stacks of Le Corbusier furniture. Stella McCartney staged a playful exhibition inside the monumental city gate Porta Nuova. To name but a few.Fashion brands are no strangers to activating Milan’s architecture through exuberant installations. The city is a capital of fashion as well as design, after all. But recently, they have brought more of the catwalk-show spectacle to the design world, and design — its cultural cachet on the up, no longer trailing behind art — is in turn attracting more of the fashion crowd. The result is that fashion brands play an “increasingly important” role at Milan Design Week, says Paolo Casati, creative director of Fuorisalone, the citywide platform of design events coinciding with Salone del Mobile each year. “The synergy between fashion and design has significantly intensified,” he says.Last year, Saint Laurent joined the party, making its Milan Design Week debut in the elegant 16th-century San Simpliciano cloisters, where an exhibition of plates designed by Italian polymath Gio Ponti was hosted in a specially designed modernist pavilion inspired by his architecture, its graceful columns engaging in a gentle dance with the surrounding colonnades. This year, the brand takes over Padiglione Visconti, a cavernous industrial space used for nightclubs and theatre performances, to stage a show of furniture designs from celebrated French modernist Charlotte Perriand. Just as it does in its catwalk shows and fashion collections, Saint Laurent returns again to the core inspiration of modernism, speaking to the ethos of the brand’s 1960s origins. A regular design highlight is Loewe, which has grown from its roots as a Spanish leather producer into one of the coolest names in global luxury. Its annual exhibitions of craft-driven homeware pieces on a theme — think baskets, lamps, chairs — feature work by some of the world’s best designers, artists and architects. Last year, in the 18th-century Palazzo Citterio, spiky leather pendant lights designed by British-Kenyan ceramicist Magdalene Odundo hung among intriguing illuminated creations harnessing horsehair, stained glass and birch twigs from artists like Dahye Jeong and Anthea Hamilton. Next month, returning to its palatial venue, Loewe transforms the humble teapot through the vision of 25 creatives including British architect David Chipperfield, Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola and Korean-American artist Jane Yang-D’Haene.Talk of the town each year is the Hermès takeover of the event space La Pelota, to exhibit its home decor designs in installations from giant geometric lanterns to a maze of stone walls. Gucci made a similar splash in 2024 with its Design Ancora exhibition, an acid-green suite of rooms hosting sumptuous Gucci-red furniture — reissued and updated versions of classic designs from Italian furniture brands including Tacchini and CC-Tapis. This year it’s set to pivot to the San Simpliciano cloisters for an exhibition that “reimagines” the material of bamboo, curated and designed by scenography specialist 2050+. Put simply, the experience of staging catwalk shows, infused with theatrical and artistic sensibilities, is a crucial jumping off point that furniture brands simply do not have. Too many design showrooms in Milan struggle to bring their creations to life — when these are precisely the objects they want us to live with. “The way domestic interiors seem to be represented by design brands is actually totally absurd: so neutered, so one-dimensional,” says David Michon, author of the bitingly witty design insider newsletter FOR SCALE. The better showrooms are those that recreate “chic apartments”, he adds, but even this is a “narrow fantasy”. Fashion brands bring the fantasy in all its experimental glory.And fashion has been making explicit moves into design by launching home decor arms — with Milan providing the ideal opportunity to champion them. While Hermès, Versace and Fendi have long produced furniture and interior objects, the past decade has seen brands including Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci start their own lines. This year Louis Vuitton launches its Home Collections as a “new chapter” for the brand, featuring a special showcase at the neoclassical Palazzo Serbelloni — onetime retreat of Napoleon. Interiors-focused arms of fashion businesses have been gaining ground especially in the wake of the pandemic, when lockdowns saw a rush of consumption towards furnishings and homeware instead of fashion items. In 2024, a report for the market research group Fortune Business Insights valued the global home decor market size at $747.75bn. Other factors have played a part: with growing concerns around sustainability, for example, the endless churn of the fashion industry becomes less appealing. Rahul Malik, chief growth officer at industry website The Business of Fashion, says expanding into homeware “allows brands to build more durable home collections alongside their more fleeting fashion offerings”. (Whether we need a design week in a climate crisis is another story.) It’s also about a wraparound luxury lifestyle. Consumers now look to interior decor as a status symbol the way clothes and cars have long performed. And it doesn’t stop at furniture: Fendi may offer sofas alongside its dresses, but soon the label will launch apartments. Branded residences are also coming from Armani and Bvlgari. In the slippery way that culture works, furniture and home design have simply become cooler. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok don’t hurt, providing vehicles for interior objects to become as desirable as the latest handbag. At Milan, it’s undeniable that luxury fashion brands have the cultural and financial capital to attract top names and stage grand, ambitious events. Perhaps the furniture brands feel shown up, but in many ways it’s an invitation to up their game. Decor is having a moment of desirability and cachet, says Michon, and furniture brands should “take a page” from what fashion is doing. “A lesson should be learned on making decor sexy,” he says. Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram
