#99 Milan Was Fine. Stop It.
The annual Salone bitching has hit a new high.
The complaints landed before the week ended.
Jasmin Jouhar, in a rant for the thing magazine, declared the fair “no longer deserves to carry the word ‘design’ in its name.”
Metropolis called it “a caricature of itself.” designboom, which spent the spring publishing dozens of preview guides, admitted in print: “…we are complicit in the noise.”
Sight Unseen argued Milan had crossed into Cannes-and-Coachella territory, with fashion-house budgets driving installations that exist to be photographed. Dezeen framed its grassroots roundup as the antidote to “peak brandification.”
A 20-year veteran at Industry Related said Milan had been “AGGRESSED“ by fashion brands. Social media went full-blaze bitching.
I get it. There were many head scratching moments. Margot Robbie and Zoe Saldaña posed at the grand opening of RH’s new Milan flagship. McDonald’s opened a Damien Hirst-themed ball pit. But the numbers show that this approach is working, as long as you define working as “growing earned media value.”
A reported 48 fashion activations at last year’s Salone generated $14.5 million in earned media value, more than the official Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone accounts combined. Fashion drove 56% of the week’s share of voice on social media. None of this is reversing.
The loudest complaints are coming from people who are paying the least attention.
If you are a new Money Folder reader, you might know that I started my career in the music industry writing about underground musicians and independent record labels in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. I’ve seen this entire thing happen before.
The era of music I covered had to push against major record labels and financial inequality, but was otherwise relatively free to organize and build amongst themselves—which they did with amazing creative and cultural output and relevance. It had a powerful middle class.
Then tech came along and ruined that, permanently changing the music industry for the worst. In 10 years the global music industry shed two-thirds of its revenue, ushering in an era of consolidation and enshittfification.
An entire generation of consumers grew up believing music was free. Soon they were taught content was free too (and shortly after that, they were taught that democracy was free as well).
But here’s the thing: We all still think sofas cost money.
Design is largely a collaborative, trade-focused process. It’s very hard to turn that into a “product” that tech, or private equity, can bundle for a quick quarterly return.
Luxury brands, for the most part, are reading design—especially Milan Design Week—all wrong. Their brain-dead social media chasing will not change design culture. Designers can’t be bought the same way musicians can.
Great design is a slow process. It requires an entire creative community working in collaboration over extended periods of time to produce great work. If a single creative mind could reliably create meaningful, relevant work that resonates with broad audiences, the “celebrity creative director” approach at the core of big fashion houses would be thriving, not failing.
That model does not work, and no amount of brand activations can change that.
Time, research, failure, experimentation, and collaboration are requirements for all great design. No PE-firm has time for that. But you know who does?
The design trade.
We should all enjoy the fancy new dinners and parties happening in Milan. The gorgeous people and silly outfits are fun. Post your photos, because no one cares and it really does not matter. Young designers will build their own networks around the fringes, and will create the aesthetics and environments of the future.
Savvy designers, and the employers paying attention, will realize they’ve been handed a seat at the attention economy’s table. The world is watching. What we do next is the only thing that matters.
Oh, I forgot to mention. Yes, I went to Milan. I wrote 11 features about my time there. You can read them all (for free) here.