INDUSTRY RELATED: Milan Design Week 2026 Review
Observations from a 20-year veteran on the world's largest design spectacle.
Industry Related is a weekly (ish) newsletter to unmask and straight-talk brand comms, from a multi-national, award-winning team that has worked with Airbnb, BarberOsgerby, Diageo, The Eames Institute, Harry’s, Humanscale, iF Design, Kartell, and Savile Row, to name just a few.
Amy reporting here today from London, where it’s 61F/16C and the trees are finally blooming properly. Of course, with that Springtime beauty comes the allergens, which are currently hosting a swirly dirly disco party that affects even the heartiest of sinus cavities.
I returned from Milan Design Week on Friday. After seven days of non-stop walking, talking, harvesting my memory in search of a name, skimming non-design emails while navigating streets filled to the brim (if I haven’t responded — send it again plzzzz), averaging four hours of sleep, and running on coffee, prosecco, and the occasional pasta, I spent a few necessary days in my chrysalis. I’ve also been processing my vibe on the whole week.
Let me start by saying I really loved this edition of FuoriSaloni, Salone, Milan Design Week, or whatever the hell you want to call it. The weather was ideal, the city was alight with brilliant minds and beautiful people. There was a loveliness to it that may have come from the nostalgia of my TWENTY years of attendance, or maybe it was simply my frame of mind as this year I intentionally curated an itinerary of small and meaningful moments as touch points amidst the chaos.
Sure, we were AGGRESSED (as my dear Italians say in translation) by fashion brands and their hours-long queues filled with aspiring influencers, content-crazed bystanders, and not a single human with any ACTUAL BUSINESS to do during the week. My musings from last year seem to still ring true - the fashonisation of Salone, and the subsequent masses that follow the glitz and celebrity it brings, act in direct opposition to what most of us are looking for in Milan - inspiration, connection and thought-provoking dialogue.
That said, there were installations that truly moved me (Uzbekistan, to name one, which poetically grounded craft in cultural survival); exhibitions that grounded design in humanity (Triennale Milano was chock full of them); meetings that made my mind spin with incredible ideas (refurbishing old school gas stations into beautiful moments of respite); and conversations that genuinely antagonised my thinking alongside some good ole side-splitting laughs with design friends I see rarely outside of this week.
So on one hand I could say, what more could a girl ask for and end this post here….
EXCEPT.
Except there is one niggling thought that keeps going through my head.
What are we doing here?
WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? Where is the intention? How many brands are showing up just to show up, rather than with a clear and defined desired outcome?
I'll remove the actual Salone del Mobile from this conversation for now because if you were up at the fairgrounds (bless your heart), there is no doubt of your intention: to do business, write orders, get it done. But the rest of it? The Fuorisalone, the brand activations, the insane marketing spend? It’s hard not to ask: what is the point?
Design is about humans. If fashion is exclusionary, design is its accessible, democratic counterpart. Art is for yourself, design is for others. It is, at its core, a discipline that centres on human experience, one that is meant to welcome people into a conversation and spark inspiration. Which might be exactly why people with no industry ties flock to Milan during design week. During fashion week, the door gets slammed in their face. During design week, it's propped open… and that was always the point.
Cast your mind back 15 years to when Fuorisalone started taking off and brands outside traditional furniture and interiors like Lexus, Samsung, and Airbnb (HAYYYY! ✌️) began showing up. The mission was clear: inspire the design-curious, build community, and demonstrate the creative industry's power to provoke change across industries. We spent years courting exactly this kind of broad, enthusiastic audience. Fast forward, and rather than celebrating what we built, we're resenting the people who show up. (Firmly looking in the mirror here too.)
But here’s THE RUB: if design at its core is meant to welcome people into a conversation and spark inspiration, that feat becomes nearly impossible at Salone’s current scale. I'm no maths genius, but the ratio of time spent waiting in line (hours) to time spent in the actual space (minutes) makes a meaningful experience nearly impossible.
One brand bragged about a forecast of 50,000 people through their doors during the week. Is that a good thing? Crunch the numbers across open days and hours, and that's a staggering volume of footfall, but is anyone having a meaningful experience? I'd wager 99.9% of attendees are there for the content grab: to post, to prove they were there, to get the EXACT same shot that will be all over every feed. But did anyone leave inspired? Did anyone trotting through even catch the name of an artisan or maker, learn something new about their craft, or understand the vision of the brand? HIGHLY DOUBTFUL.
As communicators, we understand the value of brand building and that many of these activations aren't meant to lead directly to sales. We’re here for it, don’t get me wrong, but shouldn't we at least be creating environments that centre on human experience? That allow people to learn, talk, and engage more deeply? Even in the most compelling installations, rich with storytelling, there seemed to be a complete absence of any call to action. The idea appears to be: let the masses get the content and hope for the best. Well, dear Relatives, that’s not a bet I’d be willing to take.
There was also a great deal of talk about craft this year, so much so that we may be entering a full-blown CRAFT-WASHING era. Can mass exposure alone drive genuine, long-term support for artisans? How far does hype go with heritage? It seems many brands offer "platform" as justification for not paying properly. From what I observed, the artisans were largely there in service to the brand, not the other way around. Were they credited beyond FONT SIZE 8 descriptions? Tagged properly in posts? Have these arrangements led to commercial success for the makers themselves? You'd have to ask them, but many we know who've gone down that road can tell you how little this kind of "collab" delivers in the long run. As a test: ask anyone who walked through Louis Vuitton's Objet Nomades to name the artisans behind three of the works… without reaching for their phone.
In anticipation of the Milan madness, we at Alpha Kilo decided to flip the script. If our goal is to make connections that ultimately, at some indeterminate moment in the future, bear fruit, shouldn’t we create an atmosphere that allows such connectivity to take root?
The ingredients: no more than thirty carefully curated guests (a feat during this week, let me tell you), a beautiful space, and a shared theme, but no set panel, no formal discussion. A dînatoire, so guests knew they'd be fed but weren't committed to a seat or a schedule (our invite went out before the T Mag article, just saying 😏)…
Not going to lie to you, I had low expectations, and in doing so, had never imagined how exquisitely it would come off. It was absolutely brilliant. People came and STAYED. They found common threads, previously unknown. There were curators, architects, press, artisans, designers, and investors - hailing from Abu Dhabi to Aspen. Conversations were had, connections were made. It was truly magical.
What it proved, to us at least, is that most people attending Milan Design Week are craving these exactly these type of moments of intimacy and connection. Give us a call to action, and we'll take it. As the first line of the Alpha Kilo Work/Shop manifesto states: the closer we get to the synthetic world of AI, the more humanity becomes the luxury.
Make these moments matter. Milan draws an audience from points across the globe that - if you sift through the random content seekers - is ripe with talent, vision, intellect, perspective, and creativity. Take the time to find them and create an environment conducive to convening, engaging, and enjoying a particularly special time and space. Give them insight and understanding they hadn’t been exposed to before, and the time to process it. That’s how you’ll win in Milan (or anywhere really). That’s how your brand will gain resonance.
There’s your ROI.
OH and one final note to renew your faith in humanity. A gentleman who shall remain nameless sauntered up to the press desk at the Triennale and announced he was An Influencer, only to be met with a collective eye-roll and simultaneous nausea from a group ranging in age from late twenties to early fifties, representing different points around the globe.
Maybe hype has finally jumped the shark. Here’s to getting back to the humans.
Thanks so much for reading, dear Relatives! For those of you who follow us on Instagram, we posted some Industry Related Interviews from Milano on @alphakiloltd. We’ll keep them going as they seem to be a hit. Next up, I’m going to scratch the surface a bit deeper on the power of small gatherings versus big blowouts - and Relative-favourite contributor Casey returns to give you a guide for NYCxDesign.
With love from Alpha Kilo ❤️