IN A vast, noisy exhibition space in the Tortona district of Milan, dozens of curious visitors are gathered around a bath. They coo, furrow their brows, stroke their beards.
Some poke it tentatively. As with so many of the exhibits at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the world’s biggest design fair, it is not quite what it seems.
Bobbing in the egg-shaped bath is a thick layer of dry foam, floating on top of the water, keeping it hot and preventing steam from entering the air. The idea is that the lack of humidity allows it to be used in spaces other than bathrooms; bedrooms, for example, or even libraries.
As the foam oozes and shudders hypnotically over the lip of the bath, visitors plunge their hands into it. I try it too. It is warm, dry, addictive and even edible, according to the assistants on hand with towels.
This is the sort of out-of-the-bath thinking that’s typical of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, or the Milan Furniture Fair as it’s also known. The fashion week of the interiors world, it’s the biggest event on the design calendar, where press, buyers, exhibitors and designers gather each year over a week in April to find out what we’ll all be sitting on, eating at and bathing in over the next 12 months, and indeed in years to come (interiors trends move at a rather more sedate pace than fashion).
For one week only, the fashionable Milanese in their camel cashmere separates and bug-eyed shades are outnumbered by design nerds in black polo necks and black-rimmed specs. These are the design world’s tastemakers and they are here to uncover new talent, spot trends and schmooze.
Founded in 1961, the fair was originally an opportunity for the country to drive home the message that “Made in Italy” was a brand in itself, a guarantee of quality and craftsmanship. 12,000 people attended that first fair, and the event has grown exponentially in the five decades since.
Now in its 51st year, it sees 2,500 exhibitors flogging their wares to 300,000 visitors over a six-day extravaganza of good taste. It is an event that transforms the city with everywhere from shop windows to hotel lobbies given over to some sort of exhibition. Even the city’s graffiti suddenly takes on a design theme; I spot one brick wall adorned with a mocking homage to Philippe Starck’s famous lemon squeezer, reinventing the iconic gadget as a toilet roll holder.
A mammoth 530,000 sq m exhibition hall in nearby Rho is the main attraction, but numerous pop-up events and satellite sites dotted across the city are often the best places to spot the most cutting-edge design. It is in these shops, bars, warehouses and neighbourhoods that everyone, from emerging designers and art students to mammoth interiors brands, congregate.
The latter group includes Kartell (here with Philippe Starck and Lenny Kravitz to debut the duo’s new rock ’n’ roll furniture line) and Ikea, which is launching its seventh PS range – which aims to bring “democratic design” to the masses – in a vast warehouse space in Ventura Lambrate, affectionately known as the youthful, edgy underdog area of the fair.
Outside, visitors crowd the rain-soaked street, clutching enormous maps of the fair and staring bemusedly at a group of British students from the Royal College of Art in London who are making coins out of pewter as performance art. Inside, we mingle with the Ikea designers and get a sneak peek of the products – stackable candlesticks, oversized lamps, colourful coat racks – before they hit the shops.
“If you want to make an impact, you make it in Milan,” says Ikea PS project leader Peter Klinkert. “If you want to make a statement, this is where you come.
“It’s important for us to be in contact with ongoing trends,” he adds, “and this year it’s a lot about minimalism, blonde wood, bright colours and a mix of materials.”
Among the many pieces on show that will command four, five or even six-figure price tags when they eventually go on sale, Ikea represents accessible and affordable design and is a reminder that not everything at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile is for design geeks with bottomless pockets.
Pieces are fun, bright and almost childish, one of the many themes to emerge from this year’s fair. Technology also proves popular with a number of brands experimenting with 3-D printing. British designer Tom Dixon even makes chairs and lamps from sheets of metal on a live production line as visitors watch, mesmerised.
Other trends to surface include oversized furniture, (sofas are big and squashy like giant dead caterpillars, while tables are long enough to feed armies) recycled pieces (a coat stand made out of placcy bags creates a bit of a fuss while a table made out of the old floor of a gymnasium is a thing of beauty) and functional interiors with sophisticated, quirky twists. Here the British designer Lee Broom triumphs, exhibiting bare bulbs in decorative cut crystal as well as simple wooden bistro chairs outlined in neon lights.
Of course the Milan fair is about grabbing headlines as much as it is about exhibiting and selling furniture and there are plenty of eye-catching, if not entirely practical, pieces knocking around. I overhear a buyer at the Teckell stand asking about the cost of a gold-plated foosball table. He doesn’t even flinch as he takes note of the E16,000 price tag. Then there’s the chair, by Massimiliano Adami, upholstered to look like a wrinkly shar pei dog, the denim-covered Smeg fridge (whatever you do, don’t spill milk down it) and the rocking chair made entirely from flimsy strands of wool suspended with near-invisible wires from the ceiling.
The big fashion houses are all here too, collaborating with designers to create pieces for the home that complement their clothing. Hermès gives us a modular wall-covering system with rather gaudy cut-outs of the letter ‘H’, while Marni and Moschino do chairs and Dolce & Gabbana unveils a leopard-print bicycle.
Over at the main exhibition hall in Rho, I quickly become lost. A vast, covered city of design, everyone – from Alessi to Vitra – is here and, as I wander in circles, all the good taste (a diamanté-encrusted garden parasol is perhaps the one exception) is beginning to look the same. While the occasional stand looks empty and forlorn, most are packed, and deals are being struck at every turn. Some stands attract swarms of people and it’s at these that you’re most likely to spot the Next Big Thing.
One such attraction is the “Corniches” shelving system by Vitra, a series of small, organically-shaped protrusions for displaying small objects. Sure enough, by the end of the fair, they’re one of the most talked-about pieces of the many thousands on display, and customers are already pre-ordering them before they appear in shops in September.
Practical, pretty and relatively affordable (they will hover around the £50 mark) they are proof, if it were needed, that the Salone Internazionale del Mobile is not all about chairs the price of cars, gold-plated foosball tables and baths for your library. But it is about all that stuff too, and that’s what makes it the most colourful, tasteful, stylish and barmy design fair in the world.