Salone Del Mobile 2023 Sees Fashion Brands Doubling Down On Home

While traditionally an annual global hub for the crème de la crème of the interior design space, this year’s Milan Design Week (aka Salone Del Mobile) is bringing fashion into the conversation, as top design houses set their sights on the lifestyle sector. Everyone from Loewe and Etro to Bottega Veneta and Hermés are offering activations and exhibitions at the world-renowned Milanese fair, running from April 17-23.

With an annual attendance of more than 370,000 professional visitors and showcasing more than 2,300 companies, it’s no surprise this 60-year-old event is on the radar of high-profile designers. And even less of a surprise is the attraction of the $727.6 billion home decor market. So, with as much gusto and effort as they would put into a seasonal collection at fashion week, fashion brands are showing off their home wares (or their bigger picture plans, in the case of Bottega).

Now, to be clear, many fashion houses showing at this year’s Salone Del Mobile are already immersed in interiors. Hermés, for one, has offered a range of lifestyle items from throw blankets to serveware since the early aughts. The brand’s latest home collection, showcased throughout the week, presents a more minimalist and modern take, with a focus on raw materials like glass, wood, leather, and bronze.

But, then there’s the aforementioned Bottega. While the brand did not display or introduce any home offerings, it did transform its Montenapoleone store into an immersive installation, in partnership with Italian architect Gaetano Pesce, around the brand’s handbags. While not a direct play for the home space, it’s speculated that Bottega’s presence within the furniture fair could signal its intention to appeal to a broader audience.

Ahead, see some of the fashion houses exhibiting at the 2023 Milan Design Week, and be sure to keep an eye out for good things to come.

ETRO

The Italian design house tripled down on its home offerings, with three installations in various locations across Milan presenting individual home collections, which happen to be first to be designed by creative director Marco De Vincenzo.. The first, Woven Spectrum, is in collaboration with American artist Amy Lincoln, in which her artwork is displayed on jacquard cashmere blankets, “celebrating the connection with nature through images of leaves, trees, waves and clouds in shaded hues,” according to an official press release.

The second presentation, Diving Into Patterns, is an Etro Home Interiors collection in partnership with licensee ONIRO Group. The showroom transports visitors to the “Etro Home,” described by the brand as “an explosion of colorful geometric patterns and modular arrangements designed around vibrant palettes of greens, blues, and natural earth tones and interspersed with floral patterns like the Pluma jacquard.”

The final leg of the Etro showcase is for Etro Home Collection, which hones in on the brand’s four decor pillars: “history, logo, iconography, and the figurative world of Etro.” The objects and textiles featured are set against materials of porcelain, wood, metal, and fine fabrics.

Bottega Veneta

The brand’s Vieni a Vedere (meaning “Come and See”) created a maze-like journey around the shop — described as a “grotto”by Pesce — made of resin and fabric, that ultimately led visitors to two handbags in separate locations. To commemorate the collab between the Italian label and the architect, each visitor to the exhibit each visitor is gifted a poster drawn by Pesce and artisanal sweets by Peyrano.

Hermés

For their latest installment for the home, it seems Hermés is leaning on “fundamentals,” honing in on natural materials, geometric patterns, and graphic motifs for a more modern take on decor. “This year, the staging has been stripped of all excess to display a framework composed of iron rods and concrete,” reads the statement. “Its interplay of grids and lines creates, in this radical and powerful structure, an ideal yet very real space for representation. The Hermès creations for the home presented here assert strength through subtraction with effortless presence. This is the very essence of design, drawing inspiration from materials and expressed through skilled know-how.”

Prada

After the success of its inaugural symposium Prada Frames at Milan design week last year, the brand is back for more with its Materials In Flux programming, curated by Formafantasma. According to the brand’s site, the event (which took place between April 17-19) aimed “to explore the concept of waste, investigate the dynamics that regulate waste infrastructure and their value systems, and analyze the complex relationship between materials and ecosystems.” The various scholars and professionals presenting included anthropologist Tim Ingold, critical theorist and author Elizabeth Povinelli, and artist Sandra Poulson.

Jimmy Choo

Creative director Sandra Choi teamed up with glass experts Venini for a four-piece vase collection (in various sizes and natural shades) which pay homage to Jimmy Choo’s iconic diamond shape. The intricate sculptures can be viewed in the window of the brand’s Milan store front.

Louis Vuitton

Back for its sixth year, Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades exhibit was presented in Milan at the historic Palazzo Serbelloni, with 10 new pieces unveiled by various designers. The fresh items will join the collection’s steadily growing roster (which originally launched in 2012) of 60 exclusive home items. Featured talent includes Marcel Wanders, Raw Edges, and Atelier Biagetti.

La DoubleJ

The established fashion and lifestyle brand chose to unveil its brand-new wallpaper collection, by displaying the new design in the bathrooms of 8 Milanese hotspots throughout the week. Known for its vibrant and whimsical prints, the brand is giving the people more of what they want, by translating some of their most-beloved patterns into wall coverings. “People have been asking us to do wallpaper almost since the very beginning of our print journey at La DoubleJ, and we are so pleased to finally abide,” says founder J.J. Martin in an official press release. “Most people are not like me plastering crazy prints everywhere in their house — we figured the most appropriately unexpected place for a full-on, bold, print-tastic moment would be the bathroom. So why not showcase some of our best prints in the bathrooms of some of our favorite places in Milan?”

Loewe

Jonathan Anderson’s love letter to the underrated stick chair, Loewe’s presentation at Salone Del Mobile included 30 models set against various materials on display in the courtyard of Palazzo Isimbardi. The exhibit solidifies the brand’s deepening commitment to the home space, which already includes candles, room sprays, and soaps. Vibrant colors and weaving techniques were incorporated to add interest the chairs (22 of which were vintage) utilizing everything from leather and raffia to foil and shearling.

“The act of weaving and embellishment, seen through the hands and artisanal vision of inventive craftspeople from around the world, allows the reimagining of an everyday, even humble object, transforming it into a one of a kind item,” said the brand in an official press release. “Weaving is explored as a way to create additional textures, to expand shapes in softly sculptural protrusions.”

The pieces — and coordinating handbags inspired by the quirky designs — are all available for purchase during Salone Del Mobile.