Best in Show: Milan Design Week 2025

BEST IN SHOW | HAPPENINGS | CABANA MAGAZINE

For one week in April, Milan is the epicenter of international design and creativity with almost every corner of the city transforming itself to welcome the world’s editors, artists, designers, and photographers. Camilla Frances and Miguel Flores-Vianna round-up the Cabana Editors' Best in Show for Milan Design Week 2025.

BY CAMILLA FRANCES | HAPPENINGS | 14 APRIL 2025

Sun loungers by Yaniv Chen for Lemon at Alcova, Villa Bagatti Valsecchi @ Inge Prins

From the smallest galleries to the largest fashion houses, every creative force in Milan seizes the stage during Salone del Mobile, transforming their showrooms into hubs of ingenuity or popping up in unusual and memorable spaces.

As Cabana's editors spent days (and nights) seeking out excellence and innovation in contemporary design, it became clear that the stars of the past remained ever present. From Renzo Mongiardino’s operatic set at Casa Cabana - gently updated by Deborah Needleman for her sell-out exhibition, Speak, Memory - to Saint Laurent's homage to Charlotte Perriand, Prada's tour of a 1950s Gio Ponti-designed train, Osvaldo Borsani’s modernist masterpiece, Villa Borsani - overtaken by Alcova - and Piero Portaluppi’s Villa Necchi Campiglio - where T Magazine hosts an annual party with one of Salone’s most-coveted guest lists - yesterday’s masters continued to delight and inspire.

Read on to discover the Cabana Editors' personal, and highly curated, Best in Show. 

Speak, Memory @ Casa Cabana

After months of planning and preparation, we make no apologies for choosing our own exhibition, ‘Speak, Memory: a conversation across time’ as a major highlight. It is Cabana’s firm belief that excellence in craftsmanship should be honoured alongside excellence in design and Deborah Needleman’s sell-out exhibition at Casa Cabana did just that, quietly updating the Renzo Mongiardino-designed space with original works by six craftspeople, which both hid and stood out among the Italian master’s set.

Vast hand-painted sculptures by Peter Schlesinger rose and fell throughout the apartment, overlooked by golden butterflies by Sophie Coryndon, hand-crafted plates, lamps and vessels by Sophie Wilson, other-worldly lighting by James Cherry, and richly detailed furniture by Green River Project. Even the corridors and bathrooms were part of the exhibition, with woven works by Dahyeon Yoo placed delicately on shelves and floors.

Dimorestudio @ Lora Piana

Of Dimorestudio’s multiple presentations throughout the city, the grandest and most conceptual was La Prima Notte Di Quiete at Lora Piana’s headquarters. Emiliano Salci, co-founder of Dimorestudio, transformed Loro Piana’s central courtyard into a fictional world of excess and drama. Visitors who endured the long queues and entered through plush red velvet curtains were rewarded with an impeccably staged 1970s film set: a glamorous, boudoir-style apartment in the midst of a dramatic event.

To directions of ‘enjoy the show’, cinemagoers followed sequences of light and sound around the space, which delivered an overflowing and still-running bath, a cascade of smashed porcelain plates, half-drunk bottles of whisky, closets spilling with finery, a huge sunken velvet sofa, circular half made bed and mid-meal dining table. The question of what and who had happened there lingered long after leaving - an inspired showcase for Loro Piana fabrics and the designers’ new and archival furniture.

6:AM Glassworks @ Piscina Cozzi

One of Milan’s most special and lesser-known places, the spectacular Piscina Cozzi (a lavishly decorated 1930s swimming pool, inspired by both Ancient Rome and 20th century rationalism). The Milan-based design studio presented a striking new series of Murano-made lighting in Piscina Cozzi’s basement. The swimming pool's never-finished changing rooms and shower stalls were illuminated to stunning effect, alongside a series of the designers’ prototype lighting and objects still in development.

Dimorestudio x Hosoo @ Osanna Visconti

A three-part collaboration greeted guests at Osanna Visconti’s beautiful atelier in one of Milan’s most charming, historic buildings. Beneath the celebrated Bronze artist’s own apartment, her atelier dazzled with fabrics from Dimorestudio’s partnership with 17th-century Japanese textile atelier, Hosoo, and exceptional bronze objects and furniture from Osanna’s new Magnolia collection, all made using the most wax technique.

With characteristic flair, Dimorestudio's Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci staged the atelier like one of their sets, with billowing tented-fabric ceilings. A particular highlight was Osanna’s own workshop - a small room within the atelier-apartment - where she revealed wax moulds, prototypes and sketches showing her multi-step process.

Studio KO and Colin King @ Beni Rugs

Fluttering perforated papers arranged with purpose, a curious, white-coated character redacting a document, handsome Moroccan rugs, industrial furniture, and multiple camera phones capturing the whole spectacle: Beni Rugs was responsible for a much-anticipated show in a former textile shop on Milan's Cesare Correnti.

Teaming up with Morocco-based Studio KO, Beni’s Creative Director - New York-based interior stylist, Colin King, staged a characteristically well-styled installation for the brand’s new Studio KO-designed rug collection, Intersection.

The 10 textiles mark Studio KO’s 25th anniversary and Beni Rugs' most ambitious collection to date, showcasing five Moroccan weaving methods and a reinterpretation of the R’bati carpet: a hyper-fine point knotted style unchanged in 500 years.

The collection marries Studio KO’s distinct aesthetic with Beni’s approach to heritage crafts, transforming relics of industrial society into Moroccan rugs.

Droulers Collezione

Sisters Nathalie and Virginie Droulers opened up the latter’s elegant apartment to those fortunate enough to have pre-booked an appointment.

In the impeccably designed and conceived space - which seemed to bend space and volume in its efforts to make use of every corner - furniture, wallpaper and objects from the Droulers’ inaugural collection were presented to guests.

The pieces are inspired by the sisters’ global travels, and include chinoiserie-inspired wallpaper, verdigris vessels and vases and beautiful fabric-covered dining chairs.

Canyon Road @ Palazzo Ralph Lauren

One of Cabana’s earliest supporters and longest-standing collaborators, Ralph Lauren will forever inspire us with its timeless, classic style and exceptional quality. The new Canyon Road collection, and curation for Salone at Palazzo Ralph Lauren and the Ralph Lauren store on Via Della Spiga, represented everything we love about the American brand and was a fitting tribute to four decades of Ralph Lauren Home.

The Fall 2025 Canyon Road collection (pictured above) captures the spirit of the American West, with quintessential Ralph Lauren elegance and tradition. To welcome the new collection, Palazzo Ralph Lauren was transformed into four distinct galleries representing a signature RL aesthetic: Estate (the grand English house, draped fabrics and romantic florals); Island (warm retreats, classic white and blue); Penthouse (modern sensibility and sleek designs) and Western (the rich heritage and craftsmanship of the American West). 

Objects of Common Interest @ Pasino Glasshouses

A rare Salone pleasure is the chance to poke around private homes and spaces rarely open to, or often overlooked by, the public. For the last few years, multi-site design platform Alcova has taken over two great houses in Varedo: Villa Bagatti Valsecchi and Villa Borsani, along with two striking architectural spaces.

The Pasino glasshouses - once home to the world’s largest cultivation of orchids - provided the most beautiful backdrop for another Alcova-curated spectacle: an Athens-based studio’s homage to the timeless, malleable quality of Greek Marble. Objects of Common Interest balanced rotating monolithic geometric pieces of marble like modern totems. Displayed above water and underneath glass, the pieces stood in silence, inviting careful study of materiality across time.

Alcova @ Villa Borsani

Villa Borsani itself must be seen, for Italian architect Osvaldo Borsani’s modernist masterpiece, completed in 1945, is full of inspirational original design. 

At the risk of overshadowing anything less than bold, its impressive interiors played host to extraordinary new furniture by ones-to-watch, including steel and resin chairs and vanities by London-based jewelry studio, Completed Works, and sculpted wooden chairs by Scotland-born, Stockholm-based designer Nick Ross x Contem and Tokyo-based designer, Ryuichi Kozeki.

On the ground floor, British designer Faye Toogood presented her glorious new collaboration with Japanese ceramicists Noritake: porcelain tableware and large vessels, all hand-painted with Toogood's distinctive swirling roses and foliage.

Alcova @ Villa Bagatti Valsecchi

Across both Villa Borsani and Villa Bagatti, South-African studio Lemon showcased a striking new series of outdoor furniture by Turin-based designer, Yaniv Chen, while the stripped-back basement of Villa Bagatti played host to a series of contrasting creations. Shalini Misra’s Shakti residency showcased the breadth of contemporary Indian design - from colorful textiles by Jaipur Rugs, to plush blue-fur flooring, fibreglass chairs, molten silver mirrors and sculptural lighting.

Homo Faber @ House of Switzerland

Deep appreciation for craftsmanship was on full display at the House of Switzerland at Casa Degli Artisti, where Homo Faber paired established masters with rising talents, the latter all Michelangelo Foundation fellows. From nostalgic, hauntingly beautiful wooden puppets - by London-based maker, to giant baskets, porcelain tableware, leather book binds, lacework and hand-painted ceramic busts, the works on show were united by both an Art Deco theme and the meeting of creative minds.