Milano Design Week 2022. New Design and Fashion: what are they telling us?

EDITORIAL by Cristina Morozzi

The watchword of Milano Design week 2022 is: remake. Main trend for this edition is remakes of great classics and looking at the past. Read more on Design Italy.

Salone del Mobile 2022, the watchword is: "remake"

The unforeseen events of 2022 have affected the capacity to predict what fashion and design will look like. Trends aren’t unprecedented or futuristic, but rather are turning their gaze to the past in search of certainty. “In the success of what we know well”, writes Francesco Merlo, a longtime journalist for Italian newspaper Repubblica, “there is a fear of the new and the quiet strength of that which has already proved itself”. At the Milan Furniture Fair and at the Fuori Salone events from June 7 to June 12, we’ll see more remakes of historical designs as opposed to new pieces.

Design Week: Exhibitions, showrooms, events

The lion’s share of this will be Poltronova, with its big exhibition on radical design at 10 Corso Como in the bookshop and back gallery (June 5–September 5), where alongside pieces which have already been in its catalog for some time, it will present a remake of the famous Safari sofa, designed by Archizoom Associati, where in the late 1970s Allen Ginsberg was photographed as a guest of Ettore Sottsass and his wife Fernanda Pivano, his Italian translator.

At Palazzo Visconti at Via Cino del Duca, Poltronova will exhibit its upholstery fabric Terrazzo, created by Laura Betan Wood, and the historic Plasma armchair by Nigel Coats.

Then there is the Elle Decor exhibition at Palazzo Bovara, curated by Calvi and Brambilla, which will feature Archizoom’s San Remo floor lamp and Superstudio’s Passiflora table lamp.

Back in April, Zanotta – at its showroom at Plaza 25 Aprile in Milan – presented an expanded version of the Quaderna series, designed from 1969 to 1972 by Superstudio, for its 50th anniversary. It introduced three previously unseen pieces: a small table, a desk, and a special carpet which was Zanotta’s tribute to the Florentine group, depicting the design of an unpublished histogram from the archive of Cristino Toraldo di Francia, one of the members of Superstudio.

B&B is relaunching two of its icons, both designed by Mario Bellini. After 50 years the modular Camaleonda sofa is making a comeback. Thanks to its innovative system of hooks, it can be used in various combinations, and Mario Bellini held it to represent a sense of freedom. Sofa Le Bambole – immortalized by Oliviero Toscani’s shots with model Donna Jordan, and then his wife, lying on it – is also being relaunched.

There are also numerous remakes in the world of fashion, with major projects like the Fay Archive, curated by creative director Alessandro Squarzi and Michele Lupi, which is presenting a capsule collection of its famous jacket with hooks photographed all around the world in places with extreme weather conditions. And back in April, Levis Fresh was also unveiled as a special spring/summer collection that reinvented 1970s styles with a focus on sustainability. Classic Superga canvas sneakers are also back, and in terms of underwear, silk is winning over synthetic fabrics.

These are not huge changes but are signs of a progressive shift that affects choices of merchandise and everyday ways of living.