For most people, the arrival of spring means longer days, blooming crocuses and putting away heavy coats. For me, it means an annual pilgrimage to Milan for the world’s largest furniture fair, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile.
Friends not in the design industry imagine this is something like spending four days trailing around a vast Ikea. But they’re wrong. The fair is more than anything a grand exchange of ideas between international designers, top retailers and academics, with dozens of events across the entire city. It is full of innovation and inspiration and I always return invigorated by what I’ve seen and the people I’ve met.
For more than a month, my e-mail inbox has been full of save-the-dates and my postbox overflowing with heavy, embossed invitations to private views, cocktails and “exclusive” dinners. But, in the worst economic environment since the Great Depression, can Milan really keep the party going?
Before this year’s trip I have a leisurely cappuccino with designer Tom Dixon to see how he thinks the recession will play out. His theme for the fair, Utility, seems timely and he confirms that he sees designers and manufacturers being forced to embrace “a new realism, which is going to be super painful”. Only the fittest will survive. As for the Salone week itself, he predicts “more people will be drinking sparkling wine than champagne”. We shall see.
Wednesday
It’s 7:30am and I’m bleary-eyed but excited, winging my way from Heathrow to Linate. When I run into Paul Smith, the famed fashion-to-furniture designer, in the British Airways lounge he’s remarkably upbeat, telling me about his curation of the British Design Embassy exhibition in Milan and showing me pictures of the floral-patterned fabrics in the room he designed. He’s obviously seeing green shoots – and wearing a rather dashing floral belt to match.
Two hours after take-off, I’m speeding toward central Milan in a taxi. My first stop is Established & Sons in the La Pelota space, where I find Alasdhair Willis, the usually über-cool company founder, somewhat flustered since the owner of his exhibition space is having “health and safety issues” with the local authority. Eventually the British consulate intervenes and the situation is resolved but, in the meantime, I get a private tour. It is an imaginative installation involving a labyrinth of “tulip” wood structures, isolating each designer into his or her own “village”, similar to a Brazilian favela. I like Standard Unique, a collection of quirky wooden chairs by Maarten Baas, and also Jason Bruges’ elegant, high-tech lighting. Both Alasdhair and his financial backer, Angad Paul, hope that their entrepreneurial spirit will put them a step ahead of more established competitors through the hard times and I think that if any young company is going to to survive it will be theirs.
Next up is Droog, the Dutch co-operative, which always springs a few surprises. This year the work is all about cheap materials, including a weird, giant-sized table and chair in rubber and string and a laminated chipboard clock cabinet.
The back-to-basics message is also in evidence at Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the Netherlands’ oldest china company, which has in recent years reinvented itself with contemporary design collaborations. Drawn From Clay is a new range of simple dinnerware – some plain and some with hand-painted designs – made by Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Rijswijck.
Later I see that even Swarovski, the Austrian crystal company, which typically hosts a glitzy show of chandeliers in Milan, is taking a new, thoughtful direction with Osmosis, an installation of sculptures by designer Arik Levy that explores the beauty and technology of crystals.
My highlight of the day? Rossana Orlandi’s tie-factory-turned-design-emporium, where I find Daniela Gerini’s exuberant, colourful lamp shades, Piet Hein Eek’s distressed furniture, Jaime Hayon’s stunning collection for Baccarat and a selection of work by eight students from Stockholm’s Konstfack College of Art, Craft and Design. Oh and I can’t resist buying some shocking pink loo paper for a friend – inexpensive levity amid the financial gloom.
After a quick bath at my hotel it’s time for drinks at Swarovski, more drinks at Established, a quick stop at Orlandi’s, where 90 people are expected and many more than 100 turn up, and then on to the annual dinner hosted by textile entrepreneur Michael Maharam and his wife Sabine. Curators, businessmen, designers – there isn’t a dull person at the table. Michael tells me his strategy for coping with the downturn is to push for greater precision and to approach old ideas and methods in new ways, using more sustainable fibres, for example. Still, he concedes, it’s not going to be easy.
Thursday
My first appointment is at the headquarters of the furniture group that owns the Poltrona Frau, Capellini, Cassina and Alias brands. The young chief executive, Matteo di Montezemolo, comes straight to the point, acknowledging that there is uncertainty and nervousness in the market. His solution is to shy away from superficial ideas, including wacky colours and shapes, to concentrate on producing high quality investment pieces and on communicating the story “inside” each one to retailers and customers – the four years of research it took to create the leather sofa I’m sitting on, for example. (Indeed it’s as soft as a baby’s bottom.) “It’s about investing in the future and making products that are not cheaper but better,” he says.
My next meeting is with Renzo Rosso, whose fashion empire Only the Brave includes Maison Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf, Sophia Kokosalaki and Diesel, the latter of which is launching a homeware line with Moroso and Foscarini. It’s a funny time for such a venture but Rosso thinks it’s the perfect brand extension, “speak[ing] the language of youth and appeal[ing] to a generation who want to express their personality through design”.
In my view, however, the best place in Milan to see new thinking is the Design Academy Eindhoven show, which always leaves me uplifted. The school’s new director, Dutch fashion designer Alexander van Slobbe, is smart, warm and charismatic (despite his unfortunate name) and there is plenty here to make me chuckle. I particularly like the installation of handmade miniature ceramics nestling inside trays of watercress, a plant I find on several stands this year. More green shoots? Or just a new symbol for greenness?
On to Zona Tortona – endless halls filled with sofas, tables, rugs and “much of a muchness” lighting, all screaming for attention. In the end it becomes a confusing blur. But at the very point when I am feeling foot-weary and faint for lack of nourishment I experience a joyful Milan moment – a warehouse crammed with reproductions of porcelain sculptures made in 1735 by Richard Ginori, unearthed from old crates and brilliantly reinterpreted by Paola Navone. I am blown away. Later, at dinner, my friends and I agree that this work is the most original thing we’ve seen so far. Perhaps there are more lessons that those in the 21st century can take from the 18th.
Friday
I start with breakfast at Cova, my favourite café, with designer and former Elle Decoration editor Ilse Crawford. I draw the line at standing at the bar Italian-style so we sit.
But then I’m off to meet another industry maven, Tricia Guild, creative director of London shop Designers Guild, for a day at the Salone fairground, a small city of about 14 mammoth halls crammed with furniture (and my personal idea of hell).
We make a beeline for the best one – hall 12 – and I’m interested to see how Tricia and her team will decide what to buy this year. “Foremost it’s about design,” she tells me. But, given the strong euro and weak pound, price is also key, as is service, reliability of delivery and quality – “even more so now”, she explains. Tricia gets very excited by a white table at MDF – “minimalism with soul, molto bella”; a leather chair by Jasper Morrison at Vitra; Philippe Starck’s “well-priced and very contemporary” outdoor furniture at Driade; woven rugs at Kasthall; and “well-made, comfortable” furniture from Montis. Her team will later discuss them all and her buyer, Mark Homewood, will return to deal with negotiations. We then move on to Moroso, which Tricia describes as “always so inspiring”. Frankly, at this point, a cup of coffee seems far more inspiring to me.
In the evening I am Murray Moss’s “date” at the “Craft Punk” party hosted by Fendi, another fashion-design partnership. Murray owns an influential store-cum-gallery in New York (and now also in Los Angeles) and has been credited with boosting the careers of now-famous names such as Fernando and Humberto Campana and Studio Job. He has lived through downturns before but is particularly gloomy about this one. “Recession doesn’t help creativity; it starves it. And there is no scenario in which that is good,” he says.
Still, we are both cheered by the exhibition – a group of small ateliers with nine designers demonstrating their crafts. Best in show are Simon Hasan’s boiled leather vessels. Rossana Orlandi wants to talk to him and I sense Murray is impressed. Life does go on.
We leave as the crowds swell and the music gets louder, stopping to say a few words to Ambra Medda, co-founder of Design Miami, and Paul Thompson, incoming rector of London’s Royal College of Art.
Saturday
It’s my last day and there’s still much to see. My first stop is Ingo Maurer’s show at the Krizia space, where I fall in love with an egg. Suspended from the ceiling is an enormous ovum-shaped chandelier with light emerging from carefully placed cracks. I learn that it’s fabricated from aluminium coated with a paste of ground-up eggshells. Maurer is a genius.
I then jet across town to 10 Corso Como, Carla Sozzani’s lifestyle store, where a showcase of the 1980s Memphis design movement re-affirms my faith in its durability and freshness. I also peruse the fantastic book and music department and buy some rare Chet Baker remixes.
Again, there’s comfort in the past – and apparently also in religion, according to Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel of Studio Job, who I find in the church of San Simpliciano with their own version of The Gospel, including stained glass windows, hand-painted ceramics and The Last Supper, 17 large-scale pieces cast in rusted foundry iron – neither commercial nor practical but certainly a statement in these straitened times.
Back out on via Monte Napoleone, I’m struck my how busy the city is. Hotels are still full, restaurants are still packed and people are still shopping. Yes, everyone I surveyed was worried about shrinking sales and fewer opportunities for boundary-pushing design but the Milan buzz was still infectious. There is no doubt that good design is essential, even vital, for a healthy economy. So let’s drink to that.
