Milan Design Week 2023: key trends, insights and interviews

Discover the key trends, insights and interviews from Milan Design Week 2023.

Milan Design Week is considered the world’s biggest event dedicated to design, split into Salone del Mobile at the Fiera Milano exhibition centre and Fuorisalone in showrooms, palazzos and other venues across the city.

Relive the festival from the eyes of our experts, alongside designers and disruptors in the interior design industry. Tune in to our four-part podcast series which covers four interior design trends: A Sense of Optimism; Outdoor Lifestyles; Sustainability and Design; and Materials Focus. Expect to hear from innovators including Formafantasma, Danish company Gubi’s chief brand officer Marie Kristine Schmidt, German designer Markus Benesch and more.

A sense of optimism

“I really did feel like Milan was back. There was a lot of joy, innovation, and people came from hundreds of countries. And the events were expanding – there were 946 events this year. One of the things I find interesting is that lots of brands beyond interior design, in architecture, are choosing to make a statement in Milan.”
– Lisa White, Director of Interiors & Creative Director, WGSN

Outdoor lifestyles

“Today people have the same requirements for outdoor furniture as the indoor space and that has been catapulted through Covid-19. We spent more time at home, we spent more time in nature, and we’ve seen outdoor spaces breaching way more into the indoor spaces. This is the idea around flexibility. We want to segue between in and out and be borderless and free.”
– Marie Kristine Schmidt, chief brand officer, Gubi

Sustainability and design

“There is also rethinking the supply chain which, I think as designers, is the most interesting thing to do at the moment, more than designing an object. We are at the biggest furniture fair in the world and the question, “Do we really need to have the chair?” is still relevant. What we did for Tacchini is really rethinking the supply chain and that’s what we’re very interested in.”
– Andrea Trimarchi, co-founder of Formafantasma

Materials focus

“It’s interesting to see where all these biomaterials are going. At Alcova, which we keep referencing, we saw the first entirely compostable chair that is a finished commercial product. It’s injection-moulded from PLA derived from corn and hemp fibres, and even the cushions, the upholstery, is made from hemp-based foam.”
– Gemma Riberti, Head of Interiors, WGSN

To hear the full conversation, tune into episodes 75-78 of our Create Tomorrow podcast on Anchor, Apple and Spotify. WGSN subscribers can click here to find a suite of six trend analysis reports covering all the trends you need to know from this year’s event.