5 Takeaways from Milan Design Week

& 5 lessons learned!

Ever since interviewing Emilia Petrarca about Salone last year for this piece in Fast Company, I resolved to make it to the furniture fair myself.

Salone, or Milan Design Week, which are often interchangeably, refer to the week-long furniture and design fair and satellite events in Milan that bring tens of thousands to the city every April. It has become bigger every year, with more brands flocking to put on activations.

In a typical last minute fashion, I booked my flights four days before the events kicked off. I had a lovely weekend in Milan with G and then he headed back to Edinburgh so I could run around the fair myself.

As you might expect, I was in great company. I met up with one of my favorite design writers, Jes Salter, who so beautifully showed me the ropes as I was OVERWHELMED! My friend Hugo curated a gorgeous exhibition at the Triennale and one of my favorite moments was running into him outside of the Hermés exhibition.

I met the lovely founders of the Ticking Tent vintage fair in the Cabana store as we both gushed over the newest edition of the magazine. (New York and Connecticut-based friends, the next Ticking Tent will be at Spring Hill Vineyards in Connecticut on May 3rd!)

While walking around, I recognized some of my favorite writers and had to pinch myself not to geek out. The furniture fair draws the who’s-who in publishing, design, and now fashion.

I loved reading the commentary and seeing the beautiful imagery captured by creators and writers including Nadine // The Stanza, Lucy Williams, laura reilly, Emilia Petrarca, Emma Apple Chozick, Reserve Home by Mallory F., Athena Calderone, Kirthanaa Naidu, Margot Lee, Eny Lee Parker, and more!

My sole goal for attending Milan Design Week was to soak it in. For me, ideas for pieces come from seeing patterns, which means I need to take in as much information as possible to start pattern-matching.

Milan Design Week was great for that—almost too great—I took in so much stimuli I will need some weeks to sift through what I saw.

That said, I am not a design critic by any means, and if ever I needed to tell you what was good or bad, I don’t think I’d be able to. I could tell you what spoke to me and what I saw a bit of myself in.

If you’re a long-time reader of this newsletter, you might have noticed that I write from what I am personally experiencing. (I had a sobriety beat when I stopped drinking, I was briefly a wedding writer when I was planning my wedding, our renovation inspired me to get into interiors, I just wrote about my neighborhood bakery, etc.)

As such, my favorite pieces at Salone were the ones that felt like they held a message for me.

I’m sharing these in case you find some of yourself in them. Carl Rogers said, “What is most personal is most universal.”

Here’s 5 things that said exactly what I needed to hear at the moment.

My 5 Favorite Things at Milan Design Week:

1. “Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

― Anais Nin

That quote was on the wall when I stepped into the 16th century villa where Michael Anastassiades was showing his beautiful work.

I met Anastassiades when I quoted him for the profile I wrote about the Machado-Muñoz gallery in the FT where I first encountered his work in Madrid. When I saw he was showing at Milan Design Week, I knew I needed to go.

this gorgeous room is actually a former bathroom

2. The value of non-linear career paths: I went to the Ferrari presentation and I was so taken by the way Flavio Manzoni, Ferrari’s Chief Design Officer, spoke about creativity and non-linear career paths.

Confession: Generally speaking, I feel very confident in my life and career. But there was something about Milan Design Week (perhaps all the fabulous and impressive people in one place?) that wracked me with imposter syndrome.

My brain whirled with doubts about whether I belonged there. (I never worked in a newsroom, I never worked on-staff as a writer, I’ve always been freelance, the bulk of my career has been in finance and tech, etc, etc, etc.).

Who was I to think I could be a design writer?

So hearing Flavio Manzoni, Ferrari’s Chief Design Officer, say the following felt like a direct download from the universe.

I’m an architect and this background helps me approach projects in a completely different way. Not in a self-referential way, but to connect different worlds—call it cross-fertilization or lateral thinking.

Oftentimes, the intuitions that are at the base of a new project come from different fields. Adjacencies but also fields that are completely different, like music for example.

This creates serendipity. Serendipity is a beautiful term that Americans use to represent an intuition which comes from deep research in another field. From that research in another field, you have a short circuit— something that creates immediately an image.

And imagination is the most important factor.

3. 'Speak, Memory: A Conversation Across Time' Exhibition at Casa Cabana, curated by Deborah Neddleman

The images alone can speak for this, but it was by far my favorite exhibition. The setting, the former apartment of Martina Mondadori (founder of Cabana)’s mother, was designed by artist and architect Renzo Mongiardino, and was extraordinary.

The exhibition included six bodies of work by masterful craftspeople, which included four furniture pieces by Green River Project, a furniture and design practice founded by Ben Bloomstein and Aaron Aujla, and Emily Adams Bode Aujla, founder of Bode. I was also taken by Sophie Wilson’s ceramics.

This quote from Sophie Coryndon in her conversation with Deborah Needleman will stay with me for a while.

“It feels urgent to me in this increasingly digital age to make things slowly by hand—to have an idea and then physically make it a reality. We are in a real danger of losing craft skills and knowledge, and I’m not sold on the digital world we have all signed up to.”

You can read more on Cabana’s ‘Atlas of Craftsmanship’ which I can’t wait to dig into.

4. The Ralph Lauren Palazzo. Wow. I stepped into my Pinterest board at this one.

I saved so many images of this gorgeous space when looking to decorate our Edinburgh flat and I’m here to tell you that no photos does it justice?

It was grand and fabulous and I wish I could have slept here. I also learned that Ralph Lauren collaborates often with Johnstons of Elgin and I’m so keen to visit their mill (which dates back to 1797!) here in Scotland.

5. The smallness of the world. I ran into my dear friends from Barcelona at a gallery (we were planning to meet later that day!) Then, we walked into a random party off the street and the first person I saw was a guy I recognized from my co-working space in Edinburgh.

The day prior, I met an amazing woman from Madrid living in Milan who is planning an event in NYC. She told me she found an amazing florist….who was it? One of my best friends in NYC who did my wedding flowers.

The grand big world is so tiny!!!!! And I believe the universe gives you these glimmers to show you that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

And 5 tips I wish I had known…

1. Clothing: It’s much more casual than I expected, but casual in a Milanese way which means effortlessly chic with effortful tailoring. I did not see people in skirts and dresses.

As someone who had rented three dress from HURR, mistakes were made.

I ended up wearing none of the dresses and instead, wore the one pair of navy trousers I have every single day. (They are the WNU Rampling Trousers and I have now ordered them in black because they are the perfect pants).

On the third day, I went into Ba&sh and splurged on the perfect navy blazer. I’m currently wearing it as I write this to get the cost per wear down.

For next year, I am only bringing jackets and pants. I hate being dressed wrong!!! But I will say that I did get a great blowout for 30 euros (pictured above) which I would 100% do again.

2. Accommodation: BE CENTRAL! I was hosted by CUPRA at the AC Hotel in Brera which was a lovely location. Before that, stayed in a Kindred for four days (which cost $120 in TOTAL!)

I have already set alerts for 2026 Milan Design Week because staying in a Kindred is without a doubt the best way to travel smartly, in nice apartments, without coughing up cash. Here is my referral code if you want to join.

3. SHOES!!!! Trainers. Fashionable trainers ideally, but really any trainers will do. I wore my New Balance 530s to smithereens.

4. Bring a friend… who will help you combat FOMO. Being left to my own devices meant that I RSVPed to way more than a human could possibly attend (like three events at exactly the same time) and then tried to go to all of them?

If G or a friend had been there, they would have provided a witness to my insanity. So next year, I will not go alone and instead will bring a friend with good boundaries and realistic time management skills.

5. I probably should have brought some protein bars. Also a mini steamer or iron. And a portable charger.

With these lessons learned, I’m already gearing up for next year.

I’ll never forget the moment when it all sunk in, that yes, despite my imposter syndrome, despite everything, I was living exactly how I could have dreamed of when I was a little girl.

Sitting at dinner across from my husband (!!) in Milan, eating the best pasta of my life (!!!), about to attend fashion and design events, where I had been invited to attend as a writer. I think about the younger me—who struggled so much with food, dating, and desperately wanted to be a writer. I have to think she’d be proud.

It’s so easy to constantly move the goal posts, and never feel like you’ve accomplished enough. But in that moment, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude. My career has been an ambling walk but I have never felt more like myself.

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Thank you so much for reading! Let me know if you enjoyed this. After five years of noodling around on Substack, I’m trying to find my voice on here. Do you like my more personal musings (what I’ve written in the past) or do you want more trend reporting? Let me know. I read every email response I get.

Note: My links to clothes and Kindred are affiliate links!