It’s springtime in Milan, which can only mean one thing: the city’s annual design week is back. Every April, the design world (and now, the fashion world, too) descends on the Italian city for both the Salone del Mobile furniture fair and the circus of exhibitions and parties that takes place around it—before heading for an after-midnight negroni sbagliato nightcap at Bar Basso, naturally.
Over the past few years, the fashion world has become an increasingly dominant presence at Milan Design Week, whether showcasing their latest homewares collectsions, staging immersive design installations, or simply presenting exhibitions by craft-focused artists in their stores. Here, find Vogue’s roundup of all the fashion-adjacent happenings during Milan Design Week 2026.
Hermès
This year, Hermès—always a highlight among the fashion world offerings—pared things back a little. Past installations have included elaborate set pieces and moody, theatrical lighting, but stepping into their longtime Milan Design Week home, the La Pelota gymnasium, the space’s slate had been wiped clean. Everything was light, white, and unexpectedly bright. It served as a crisp backdrop for a sea of plinths of varying heights, an installation by designer Charlotte Macaux Perelman that was intended to evoke the feeling of a miniature city: draped across its tallest skyscrapers, then, were richly colored cashmere blankets; on some of the lower lying buildings, you could find shimmering vessels in hammered palladium and gorgeous leather marquetry boxes that would sit pride of place on any tabletop. For Hermès this year, the devil was in the details. —Liam Hess
Louis Vuitton
Once again, Louis Vuitton staged an epic presentation within the Neoclassical grandeur of the Palazzo Serbelloni—and it began with a striking setpiece in the courtyard. More specifically, a monumental rug created in collaboration with students from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, featuring bold geometric patterns inspired by the work of the early 20th-century Art Deco designer Pierre Legrain. In fact, Legrain’s name cropped up repeatedly across the maison’s Objets Nomades collectsions this year: the star of the show was a reissue of the very first furniture piece commissioned by Gaston-Louis Vuitton in 1921, a striking omega-shaped red-and-black dressing table here reimagined in sleek lacquered wood and Nomade leather. But there were still a few of the brand’s signature playful touches in the mix as well, such as the globular Stella armchair in a mix of eye-popping shades of blue, designed by Raw Edges studio. —L.H.
Issey Miyake
One of the most interesting materials at this year's Salone del Mobile started its life as a byproduct. The tissue paper fed through the pleating machines at Issey Miyake's manufacturer caught the eye of studio director Satoshi Kondo, who saw in its cross-section the growth rings of a felled tree. The Paper Log: Shell and Core, presented at the Issey Miyake Milan store this April, is the full unfolding (no pun intended) of Kondo’s discovery. Working with Madrid-based Ensamble Studio, the sheets are shown peeled and sculpted, then hardened with crystallising agents to freeze every pleat mid-gesture. The Miyake team’s installation responds in contrast, soaking rolls in wax, binding them into bundles, and extracting stools, chairs, and tables. What runs through all of it is a sensibility central to Issey Miyake since the beginning: that the most interesting design often starts with what everyone else was about to throw away. –Sean Santiago
Ralph Lauren
It’s always a tonic to stop by the Ralph Lauren showroom during Milan Design Week—stepping from the chaos of the city’s university neighborhood and into the oasis of calm that is the Palazzo Ralph Lauren, a 12,000-square-foot Rationalist architectural masterpiece with leafy courtyards and even a café inside. (This year, visitors had the additional charm of being greeted by a model decked out in head-to-toe Ralph, holding a glossy Golden Retriever on a leash; this a lifestyle brand with a capital L, after all.) The collectsions, meanwhile, were primarily split into two sections: the “American in England,” country estate-inspired Saddlebrook collectsion—mahogany, floral jacquards, woolen plaids—and the polished Art Deco penthouse feel of the Sterling Square collectsion, which featured a delightful collectsion of pewter accessories, as well as a particularly ravishing dressing table finished with a deep, piano black lacquer. Next up? A dedicated Milan store for Ralph Lauren Home, set to open on Via della Spiga later in 2026. —L.H.
Gucci
If there was a prize for Milan Design Week’s cheekiest project, it would have to go to Demna for his witty and subversive installation at the Chiostro di San Simpliciano. It began in a historic cloister, where an enormous jet black pavilion had landed like one of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Within it, canned cocktails were served from vending machines, inspired by the archetypes that filled his debut lookbook “La Famiglia”: a Drama Queen, Fashion Icon, Mega Pesantone, or Super Incazzata. (I was delighted to receive the Fashion Icon.) But the true centerpieces were 12 monumental tapestries that chronicled the house’s evolution—from Guccio Gucci’s early days at The Savoy Hotel to the distinct creative eras of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, and Sabato De Sarno—blending references to Renaissance art with sly contemporary touches, such as a leather gaming chair from which Demna himself stood up to adjust the hem of a dress. It poked a little fun at the pantheon of Italian art and culture, while also celebrating it—it turned out those tapestries were made by a family of artisans based outside Bergamo that has been making textiles of this kind since the 1950s. —L.H.
Jil Sander
There’s a particular intimacy to borrowing a book—seeing which phrases someone has underlined, which pages they’ve dog-eared—that reveals something about the hand that held it. Reference Library, conceived by the Spanish interiors magazine Apartamento in collaboration with Jil Sander, explores that sense of discovery with an exhibition of 60 books chosen by 60 people, from the filmmakers Celine Song and Sofia Coppola to Colette founder Sarah Andelman, each one a small act of disclosure. Designed by the local firm Studioutte, the space allows for a non-hierarchical experience where no selection is overshadowed, creating not a greatest-hits of Western literature or a syllabus, but a map of what moved each reader. –S.S.
Prada
Now in its fifth edition, Prada Frames returned to Milan this year with the intention of engaging its audience’s capacity for critical thinking. Curated by longtime collaborators Formafantasma, this year's symposium, In Sight, turned its gaze on the image itself: ubiquitous, destabilized, and increasingly unreliable. Each session was introduced by critic and author Alice Rawsthorn, who set the tone for an hour of contemplating the environmental weight of digital image production, the political weaponization of representation, and the quiet collapse of visual truth. The itinerant series this year took place inside the Renaissance splendor of Santa Maria delle Grazie, its Bramante-attributed Sacrestia lending an almost pointed irony to discussions of what we choose to see and what we agree to believe. The city’s first Prada Home store engaged altogether different senses through a collaboration with artist Theaster Gates, who showed a collectsion of chawan bowls that were activated throughout the week with tea ceremonies. Both encouraged onlookers to take a moment to reflect, recharge, and perhaps move through the world with a renewed sense of wonder. –S.S.
Fendi
It was an image of Marilyn Monroe that sat top of mind for Maria Grazia Chiuri, nearly 30 years on, as she returned to the Fendi Baguette for Milan Design Week. The idea of how a woman carries her bag and what its contents reveal: the purse as Rorschach test. The Baguette 26424 Re-Edition takes its name from the very first model code assigned to the bag at its 1997 inception. It arrives with a softer construction and an enhanced under-arm wearability, accompanied by a special wooden box that’s reminiscent of an art crate, stencil-printed and fastened with a yellow canvas belt and metal logo buckle. The bag comes sparkling, severe, flamboyant, and exaggerated, each version an argument that there is no single version of a woman worth aspiring to. Six city exclusives, first unveiled at the fall 2026 show in February, will be available at Palazzo Fendi Milano. –S.S.
Loro Piana
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Since the mid-1980s, plaids and scarves were among Loro Piana’s first finished products, presenting an opportunity to push materials and technique with a freedom not always afforded to other categories. Studies: Chapter I, the first in a planned series of exhibitions, used this history of innovation as a jumping-off point to present 24 plaids, each treated as an individual case study. Visitors moved through the works in sequence, taking time to appreciate techniques as varied as embroidery, appliqué, handloom weaving, needle punching, patchwork, and screen printing. Raw fiber and yarn appear alongside finished pieces; process made visible rather than polished away. (Wall text accompanying each plaid conveniently divulged the number of hours that went into its creation; some topped 1000.) Each piece is made to order, approached, as the house puts it, like couture. Which is to say: with the understanding that some things are worth making slowly, for one person, exactly right. –S.S.
Miu Miu
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Miu Miu always offers a clever slice of counterprogramming during Milan Design Week—just when you feel like you’re hitting saturation point, and couldn’t possibly look at another chair or table, the brand’s Literary Club arrives, allowing you to sit in a peaceful old library for the morning, listening to a thoughtfully curated lineup of women writers talk about another author’s work. This year, the theme was “Politics of Desire”—no small subject—and the writers whose texts anchored the events were Nobel Prize-winner Annie Ernaux and the late Ghanaian novelist Ama Ata Aidoo. This year, a physical reading room curated by philosopher Rosi Braidotti allowed guests to browse a “survival kit” of feminist texts, from Audre Lorde to Simone de Beauvoir, while performances by musicians like Joy Crookes and Pip Millett—as well as plenty of spritzes and tramezzini—kept spirits high all the way through to the evening. —L.H.
Bottega Veneta
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This year, Bottega Veneta went for something a little more low-key, though no less impactful. For her first Milan Design Week outing at the house, Louise Trotter collaborated with the South Korean artist Kwangho Lee for a playful installation at Bottega’s flagship store on Via Montenapoleone, crafting a twisting mass of intricately corded leather panels that swooped down from the ceiling and coiled around the store’s water feature centerpiece. It was elegant, a little eerie, and an impressive showcase of the Italian house’s famous leather savoir-faire. —L.H.
Chloé
Originally conceived by French designer Christian Adam in 1970 and produced at the height of Italy's design revolution, the Tomato chair is an icon of unhurried, voluptuous elegance. When Chloé creative director Chemena Kamali had trouble sourcing the piece on the secondary market, she decided to take matters into her own hands, working with Poltronova on a re-edition of the chair that will be in Chloé boutiques worldwide. Reissued on a made-to-order basis and dressed in four naturally-tanned leathers—cream, cognac, sand, and black—this is a recognition that the best design, like the best dressing, is about how you inhabit the world. –S.S.
Marni
At Pasticceria Cucchi, one of Milan's most storied addresses, Marni has done something quietly radical: taken over the space for three months and made it entirely, unmistakably its own—without disturbings a thing. The collaboration, conceived with RedDuo Studio and animated by Meryll Rogge's new creative direction for the house, weaves Marni's daring elegance into the fabric of a Milanese institution through a retro-inflected visual language of red and green polka dots and stripes, culminating in the shared logo of a bow tie. Come aperitivo hour, Martini Bianco and Bitter spritzes arrive alongside a Thursday evening series of live performances, Caffè Concerto, running through mid-July. It is, in the best Milanese tradition, a place to be seen doing something completely ordinary, and looking wonderful while doing it. –S.S.
Balenciaga
Balenciaga took the opportunity of this year’s Salone del Mobile to launch Artean, a new art series under the stewardship of the brand’s creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli. (The word translates from the Basque language—the native tongue of the house’s founder, Cristóbal Balenciaga—as “between.”) In the brand’s Milan flagship store on Via Montenapoleone, they kicked the series off with an exhibition of seven works by the legendary Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida, with a pair of pictures moodily spotlit in the windows—including a piece that paid direct homage to Balenciaga himself—and a handful of sculptures scattered around the store. It wasn’t one of the loudest or splashiest shows at this year’s Milan Design Week, but it was certainly one of the loveliest. —L.H.
Dolce & Gabbana
Dolce & Gabbana brought plenty of razzle-dazzle to Milan Design Week with various projects happening across the Italian fashion and lifestyle behemoth’s multiple spaces around the city. Their Corso Venezia location was transformed into a live performance space where pasta dishes were served on plates from the Dolce & Gabbana Casa collectsion, while their new design collectsions—including the softer, more organic Moss and Gardenia lines—were showcased at their design showroom on Via Durini. Over at their Via Broggi outpost, they unveiled the latest iteration of their Gen D project, which sees the house collaborate with emerging designers, here pairing 11 makers from around the world—South Africa, China, South Korea, Mexico—with traditional Italian artisans to create dazzling new works. And for one final touch of star power? They invited Brooke Shields to co-host an event at their Alta Sartoria space, unveiling a new glasswork collectsion, Tavola Eterna, produced in partnership with the Murano glass master Alvise Orsini. —L.H.
Armani Casa
This year'’s Salone del Mobile saw the windows of the Armani/Casa flagship on Corso Venezia transformed into a showcase for eight design icons. From the Logo lamp, shown upstairs in a new floor version, to armchairs, consoles, and a bar cabinet, each piece was presented beside its newest iteration and presented under the title Origins—a celebration of style that evolves. Throughout the installation’s three distinct living spaces, each influenced by one of Mr. Armani’s own homes, the furniture articulates a vision for Armani living as much as a vocabulary: floral jacquards with a crackle-effect finish to appear as if the fabric has just emerged from a pool; black-stained ash; stonewashed chenille. Origins communicates a taste for simplicity with attention to detail. What could be more Armani than that? –S.S.
Marimekko
Marimekko transformed the osteria into something entirely its own for Milan Design Week, a flower-filled gathering space where bold textile installations unfurled alongside hand-thrown ceramics. At its heart was Kukasta kukkaan, the Finnish house's new print by Erja Hirvi, which adorned ceramics and textiles as well as the latest issue of The Plant magazine, photographed by Scheltenes and Abbenes. The brand invited guests to enjoy aperitivo on limited-edition cups, saucers, and pico plates, while the restaurant Osteria Grand Hotel was transformed through Marimekko's signature botanical language into an exuberant dining hall, with a menu by Helsinki-based restaurant Maukku that deftly married Italian and Finnish flavors. What’s Finnish for bon appetit?
Nike
This year, Nike set up shop at Dropcity, the open-armed architecture and design center located in the tunnels underneath Milano Centrale train station that invites professional architects, students, and enthusiasts alike to collaborate. The starting point of the exhibition was the secret ingredient that gives every Nike shoe is shape and bounce: good, old-fashioned air. Across the Nike Air Lab, there was an homage to Frank Rudy, the NASA engineer who invented the first Nike Airbag in 1972; a display of over 100 never-before-seen shoe prototypes; and tool stations for visitors to play around with, featuring the robotic arms and pneumatic cylinders Nike engineers use to sculpt air into the physical shapes of shoes. A particularly lovely touch? Unlike with many of the installations across the city, which are disposed of after the week is over, Nike left the high-end machinery—including 3D printers, robotic arms, and thermoforming kits—at Dropcity as a permanent gift to the city's architects and students, making the Air Lab permanent. —L.H.
La DoubleJ
La DoubleJ transformed its flagship into something that resists easy categorization with an installation, titled Size Matters, inspired by René Magritte’s Les Valeurs Personnelles, in which a comb and a wine glass occupy a bedroom at the scale of furniture. Part surrealist fever dream, part showroom, part spiritual provocation, the space was anchored by oversized homeware sculptures hand-crafted by Maestro Luca Bertozzi, the carnival artisan whose medium is usually floats the size of buildings. Woven throughout were pieces from the new Al Fresco collectsion, including weather-resistant Baba Poufs in the house’s signature prints and two-toned folding tables built for long lunches. The week was also a prelude to the unveiling of a partnership with the Villa San Michele in Florence, a Belmond Hotel, timed to the property’s reopening: a marriage of bespoke design and curated spiritual wellness. —S.S.
Tod’s
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Tod’s Icons by Icons project, a limited-edition capsule collectsion, asks a simple, elegant question: what happens when you hold one icon up against four others? The graphic explosions of Michele De Lucchi’s Kristall table for Memphis Milano, the dotted rationalism of the Castiglioni brothers’ Brionvega RR226 Radiofonografo, the sculptural futurism of Joe Colombo’s Elda armchair, and the liberated materiality of Gaetano Pesce’s Crosby chair each lend their visual DNA to a collectsible reinterpretation of the Gommino loafer. Translated by Tod's artisans, working live at the accompanying installation, the result is four styles that pay homage to Italian craftsmanship while cleverly pushing it forward. —S.S.
Longchamp
Longchamp artistic director Sophie Delafontaine has found her ideal design collaborator in Patrick Jouin (one half of the duo behind the renovation of the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the architectural icon immortalized in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation), commissioning a capsule that blurs the line between furniture and object with the house’s considered ease. Alongside the Drop tables and Olo chair, both accented with Longchamp's signature greens, the collectsion's centerpiece is the Ostara: an editioned portable lamp that reinterprets the beloved codes of Le Pliage in full-grain leather and French oak. The collectsion will travel between Longchamp boutiques worldwide, a fitting itinerary for objects designed to move. –S.S.
H&M
One of the splashiest fashion-adjacent moments of the week came not from the big luxury houses, but H&M Home, who debuted their new collaboration with Kelly Wearstler—and offered a teaser of the fashion collectsion that will accompany the homewares when it all launches in September. While they’re yet to reveal what her fashion designs will actually look like—that will be unveiled later in the summer—it’s been over a decade since Wearstler last designed clothing, and the anticipation is high. —L.H.
Rimowa
At this year’s Milan Design Week, Rimowa returned to a familiar corner of Via Achille Maiocchi to stage a sleek partnership with the legendary Swiss furniture manufacturer Lehni, creating bespoke aluminium shelving units that were meticulously crafted to snugly house Rimowa’s cabin-sized suitcases. These were presented in a minimalist, velvet-curtained “visitor center”: complete with little cards to fill out to a loved one, suggesting a place you’d love to travel with them one day, which could then be popped into a metal birdhouse-style postbox. Very sweet indeed. —L.H.
Zara
This year, Zara took over the Palazzina Appiani, a Neoclassical jewel overlooking a running track in a leafy park near Brera. The presentation, titled Calma, was created in collaboration with the avant-garde, Harry Nuriev-founded Crosby Studios, and was deliberately intended to offer respite from the chaos of those nearby Brera streets: inspired by ancient Roman baths, the centerpiece was an enormous steaming pool of water lit up in an icy blue shade, with silver beanbag loungers placed along the loggia to soak up a little sun afterwards. It also served as a backdrop for a preview of three hot-ticket upcoming collaborations for Zara Home: with the celebrated New York interiors stylist Colin King, the legendary Belgian designer Vincent van Duysen, and the historic British textile and wallpaper brand Morris & Co. —L.H.
