Yesterday I wrote about how coming back from Milan there was a lot of negativity online and I found it difficult to deal with so much complaining and bitterness seen online afterwards. And almost started to doubt my happy feelings and my own experience. But no longer after reading the article I refer to in this post I now know how to move around Milan, stay true to myself, choose what I truly love, and ignore what isn’t worth my time. I know why I return to Milan year after year and why I’ll be back again next year!
Ventura Lambrate and the Early Days of Discovery
In my post I also refer to how I suddenly felt back at Ventura Lambrate for a moment when visiting Solidified, the years where we just had a few districts, and went to Brera, Tortona, Ventura Lambrate and the Salone itself. In three or four days we saw it all.
Nowadays I stay for 6 full days, one only for Alcova which I first visited in 2018 as part of Lambrate and 5 days in town and to be honest I could have stayed 2 more days, isn’t it we promised ourselves to not be in Milan the last weekend, when even more people visit the exhibitions.
Ventura Lambrata in 2012 – no queues
Ventura Lambrate in 2012 just hanging out
Access, Privilege and Perspective
My travel buddy Stefan, aka Trendstefan who organised a Forecast club event during Milan Design week. Wrote in his newsletter today about how he also tried to stay optimistic this last Salone and felt the city was easier to navigate and smoother access to exhibitions. Then again he writes: “I should admit that I belong to the lucky one per cent here: VIP passes, skipping queues, cocktails waiting behind closed doors” And perhaps that is the real conclusion he says: “Milan 2026 belonged to the one per cent, a world of VIP access, extravagant installations no one could realistically live with, ultra-rare collectible furniture and fashion brands everywhere you looked”
I also visit Milan as a journalist myself and could easily relate to his way of thinking. I also came across a recent essay by Sight Unseen reflecting on Milan Design Week, where they describe what feels like a “terminal hype phase,” a growing obsession with access, and a system where visibility often outweighs content. It is a perspective I recognise, but it also reinforced my own way of working: staying close to my own observations, rather than being driven by the noise around it.
I often felt almost guilty when I saw the long queues and could just walk past them. And had to remind myself that I was giving a lot back in return, through all the articles over the years and the many photos I take and post, for which I always receive many lovely compliments. Thank you for that!!
From Seeing Everything to Choosing
And yet, I continue to believe that it is about making choices without becoming bitter and pessimistic, and accepting that Milan Design Week is no longer the same: it has evolved from concentrated hotspots into a distributed network.
Of course, I also sometimes got annoyed by the young girls who were busy posing and taking the perfect Instagram photo of themselves instead of the design object (although it wasn’t just the youngsters; take a look at my article on Masterly to see the Sciure Milanese at work). I myself am probably just as annoying to someone else, waiting for the right moment to capture the perfect shot. So be it; I believe everyone has an equal right to immerse themselves in what Milan Design Week has become.
Tortona with the famous bridge in 2012
Via Tortona 2012
Daily view at Milan Design Week 2026
Reading Milan Through External Voices
Today I found an article at Fuorisalone If you love reading it you will find it here: Milano Design Week 2026: a necessary reflection which also aligned perfectly with my own way of thinking.
It talks about how the growth of the Salone has brought the system to a level of complexity that requires new ways of reading it: “Over the years, expansion has been the main driving force, new “districts,” new formats, and a progressive opening toward increasingly diverse languages and sectors making it more difficult to interpret.
It is not only a question of quantity, but of orientation and attention. Within this constant density, attention becomes fatigued: if everything asks to be seen, nothing truly manages to be looked at. In a context where everything is accessible and simultaneous, the challenge is no longer finding content, but deciding what truly deserves attention!
Not because value is missing, but because it is distributed, diffused, no longer concentrated in a few recognizable places or moments. This is where a new necessity emerges: not so much reducing, but knowing how to select.
The question therefore changes: is the event model itself being questioned, or the way we experience it? A matter not only of accessibility and communication, but also of individual critical capacity. To read this complexity, it is not enough to focus on queues, gadgets, or isolated episodes: they offer only a partial vision, one that fails to capture the value of an ecosystem capable of generating connections and content on an international scale.
It is no longer only the place where people discover what is relevant, but a space in which to build a personal path. If until yesterday the question was “what to see,” today it is increasingly “what to choose.”
Observation as a Way of Working
And this is exactly how I experienced Milan Design Week this year: not by trying to see everything, but by choosing. After 20 years online with Vosgesparis, and 15 years of visiting Milan Design Week, I realise more and more that my role is not to follow the noise, but to stay close to what I genuinely see and feel. It is in that quiet space between observation and reaction that the strength of vosgesparis lies.
images ©vosgesparis – Last images by ViStyle Studio
This article is part of The Collectible Edit
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