What makes Milan Design Week the world’s most influential design event?

 To begin with, two events make the prestigious Milan Design Week. Salone del Mobile – the Milan Furniture Fair, and Fuorisalone – a set of events and exhibitions spread across the city’s design districts. While the former attracts 300,000 of the world’s finest minds in design, architecture, interiors and furniture converge, the latter also draws a lot of designers, architects, students and professionals from all over the world.

The contemporary version of the iconic 'Dali's Lips' sofa, as seen in the movie 'House of Gucci'. industry.

Salone del Mobile has always been a point of reference for the entire design community. A place of bustling creativity and healthy dialogue, this is where crucial global trends in the world of interior design and furniture are born. Trends that provide direction to the rest of the world, including China, as the world's biggest furniture makers look upon the event as the main testing ground for their new ideas, especially in the context of the global market. Thereby impacting design, production, and distribution solutions worldwide. 

New materials introduced in Milan often influences sweeping changes in the interiors industry.

This in turn creates shifts in the economics and availability of products in various forms and finishes, even in India. Staying on top of the trend therefore is to be able to predict what will become available.

It is safe to say that when it comes to interiors and furniture – colours, styles, innovations, materials – all find first life at Milan. This then influences popular notions that get picked up by magazines, which in turn lead the change in the eye of the consumer. 

Intricate craftsmanship and time honoured technique remains the core of the furniture industry.

Did you know, even movie directors and fashion gurus attend the Milan Furniture Fair? Some for creative inspiration while others with the intent to collaborate with designers in whose designs they find aesthetic resonance. 

LG's foldable TV screen, now in the market, was launched at Milan Design Week 2019 with iconic architectural firm Foster+Partners.

But the event faces a rather growing challenge, as observed in the past decade. Much of the original furniture designs exhibited at the event, reflecting the painstaking process and cost of development, research, and design innovation, are virtually stolen and aped (unsuccessfully) by various manufacturers all over the world. Thankfully, in India, we see the luxury consumer becoming more aware of their interiors, the changes they desire, and taking a keen interest in the authenticity and originality of their chosen furniture design.

New designs and innovations pave the way for a whole new interior design language, that goes on to affect the world market.

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