Melissa's Travels

Just Back From: Milan Design Week with WSJ. Magazine

Indagare founder Melissa Biggs Bradley recently traveled to Milan, during the annual Salone del Mobile fair, as the host of our inaugural Insider Journey in partnership with WSJ. Magazine. Here, she shares some of her favorite photos and highlights from the trip. 

“Now is the moment to be in Milan.” This was a statement that we heard over and over on our Insider Journey to Milan, which we hosted earlier this month in partnership with WSJ Magazine. From editor-in-chief Kristina O’Neill and publisher Anthony Cenname, who welcomed us on our first night, to almost every proud Milanese we met, this sentiment was echoed. Milan's iconic annual design fair, Salone del Mobile, has morphed since its founding in 1961 from a local furniture fair to a global celebration of Italy’s outsized role in style and design innovation. For one week in April, interior designers, fashion lovers, curators and collectors from all over the world descend upon the city. Special exhibits take place in churches, monuments and piazzas. The atmosphere resembles a street party, with a love of beauty and innovation as the central theme. On private visits, we discovered traditional treasures like Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper; rarely accessed chambers of the Duomo and a dinner in the dining room of the Villa Necchi Campiglio (which provided the set for Luca Guadagnino's film I Am Love, among other things); pop-up parties and exhibitions like those of Anton Alvarez and Carlo Massoud inside neighborhood churches, as well as the newest contributions to the city’s cultural scene, like the Prada Foundation’s Tower and the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, with Anselm Kiefer’s monumental Sette Palazzi Celesti. Unlike in so many places, where history is razed to make way for progress, in Milan, today’s tastemakers honor those who paved the way. Everywhere, the present paid homage to the past, acknowledging that all art is built on the shoulders of those who came before.

To explore our upcoming Insider Journeys and to join a trip today, click here.

 

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