there is nowhere cooler for a brand to be right now
on craft, culture, creativity, carousels and milan design week
Every April, Milan is taken over for Design Week - not just the fair at Rho, but the palazzos, the courtyards, the cafés, the streets. Milan in April is its own world. Hundreds of installations, exhibitions and gatherings spill across the city, into neoclassical palazzos, 1930s apartment buildings, hidden courtyards and spaces you’d walk past any other week without a second glance. It’s where Italian design heritage sits alongside the world’s biggest fashion houses, and where some of the most interesting creative conversations of the year happen.
This year the most talked-about activations are not from furniture brands. They’re from Zara, Chloé, Arket, Byredo, Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Marni. What they're collectively showing is that Design Week has become the place where the most interesting brands come to express how they think about creative living — about craft, objects, and the texture of daily life. Luxury is shifting from aspiration to lived reality, and being part of this world is its own form of credibility.
Picture a working antique carousel in a public garden in Milan, its horses replaced with oversized fruits and vegetables, slowly rotating, inviting you to slow down, take a moment. That's Arket this week — and it's as wonderful as it sounds. The Nordic lifestyle brand has launched a collection with Laila Gohar, the artist and food creative whose aesthetic - warm, surreal, considered - translates perfectly to clothes. It's a move straight from the luxury fashion playbook: find a collaborator whose world you want to live inside, and build something together that neither of you could have made alone. There's a café alongside the carousel, ticket draws, small programmed moments all designed as an invitation to slow down. Whimsical but not frivolous. The right level of playfulness. What it tells you about Arket is that the most powerful brand expression isn't a social campaign, it's a world, and the right world, in the right week, in front of the right people, does more for brand perception than a year of content
Chloé did something equally interesting but in a completely different vibe. Rather than building an installation, they went into the archives, and what they found there was a tomato. The 1970s Tomato chair, soft and fluid leans into the surreal and has been reissued on a made-to-order basis with Italian manufacturer Poltronova. It’s the perfect piece of brand archaeology: Chemena Kamali has been celebrated for reviving the house’s free-spirited, bohemian energy, that adventurous, slightly wild spirit that defined Chloé in the 70s, and a tomato-shaped chair from that same era is exactly the right object for this moment, really building out the Chloé world. The archive is one of the most underused assets in brand building - but only when the dig turns up something that feels interesting, ownable with a bit of magic rather than only nostalgic.
Both of these moments involve produce. I’ve also been seeing the Loewe artichoke clutch everywhere. Vegetables are apparently having a moment in fashion and design, and I am completely here for it.
Then there’s Marni, who teamed up with café Cucchi to celebrate what they’re calling Milanese social rituals and a full takeover of the space, from textiles to pastry packaging to staff uniforms, running until July. The café itself is woven into the fabric of the city: the counter-top espresso first thing, the spritz at aperitivo hour, the pastries and chatter in between. It’s the perfect distillation of how Milan actually lives, which is exactly why this works. Creative director Meryll Rogge didn’t invent something new - she found something that already existed and made it unmistakably Marni. That’s a move only someone deeply tapped into culture would think to make, and it’s what separates this from the brand café moment we’ve all seen a lot of recently.
The best collaborations work like this, not just as a press moment, though it absolutely delivered on that, but as a creative unlock where two sensibilities meet and produce something neither could have made alone. Design Week is the best showcase of what that looks like in practice, and I have a lot more to say about how to do partnerships well. I’ll come back to it.
Finally, Miu Miu hosted what Vogue called the hottest ticket of the week — a literary club with lectures, live music and conversations on sexuality and consent, channelling the energy of the artist salons of another era. A fashion house that could have done anything chose to build a space for ideas.
What all of this points to is something I’m watching closely with the brands I work with. There is a real hunger right now for the physical, the considered, the handmade - for experiences that don’t require a screen and objects that carry some sense of artisan craft and beauty. In showing up at Design Week, these brands borrow the cultural cache of the world’s most serious design conversation — and it changes how we read them. Arket isn’t fast fashion anymore, despite being owned by the H&M group. It’s considered, thoughtful, design-led. That’s what the carousel does for positioning.
If you’re a founder or a brand director thinking about where your brand earns its credibility in 2026, the answer might not be where you expect. Maybe it’s not the Coachella outposts. Maybe it’s the carousel in the garden in Milan, merrily going round.
currently:
Everything from the Lena Dunham Press Tour - every newsletter, every interview. Can my book arrive yet already!
I didn’t need more stripes in my wardrobe but I treated myself to this top from Basikke and I cannot stop wearing it.
On books, my friend Naomi May recommended London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe - I loved his other work so I'm looking forward to that one arriving.
This newsletter really resonated - Doing it all is a delusion by Melanie Masarin
And Ana Andjelic’s piece The Cultural FlyWheel is worth your time
hi holly is a brand intelligence publication for people who build brands — strategy, culture, and the thinking behind both. Written by me, Holly Chapman.
here’s how I can help you:
strategy projects: Whether you're building something new or figuring out what's not working — across brand, partnerships, PR or community — I work with founders and marketing leaders on both the strategic foundations and the creative roadmaps that deliver.
1:1 consulting and advisory: For brand and marketing leaders who want an ongoing outside perspective on a specific challenge, without the overhead of a full engagement.
market entry: Taking a brand into Australia, the US, or the UK - I’ve done it across all three, and I know what it takes to scale in each market.
Get in touch: hollyajchapman@gmail.com
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Genuinely freaked when I first saw the veggie/fruit carousel. So fun!