When design meets art: three collaborations not to miss at Milan Design Week 2026
- Editorial Staff
- Apr 22
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 23
Between immersive installations, site-specific projects, and visual reinterpretations of historic identities, more and more brands are choosing to collaborate with contemporary artists to transform Design Week into a space of cultural experimentation, where product, imagination, and storytelling merge.
During Milan Design Week 2026, one of the most interesting phenomena goes beyond design in the strict sense and concerns the increasingly close dialogue between brands and contemporary artists. These are not merely decorative operations, but fully developed authorial projects in which different languages intersect, giving rise to immersive, conceptual, and visually powerful experiences.
Among this year’s many proposals, three collaborations stand out for their coherence, quality, and ability to convey something that goes beyond the product itself.
Buccellati x Luke Edward Hall
In the spaces adjacent to the Milan headquarters of Buccellati, Aquae Mirabiles comes to life, an immersive installation curated by Federica Sala, designed by Balich Wonder Studio, and built around the imaginative world of British artist Luke Edward Hall.
The project was conceived to celebrate the Caviar collection, one of the maison’s most recognizable formal codes, but it extends far beyond the dimension of the product, transforming into a richly layered and deeply evocative visual narrative.
The installation unfolds as a true contemporary nymphaeum: a space that, from the outside, evokes a theatre of water populated by mythological figures: Neptune, naiads, and sirens, reinterpreted through Hall’s light, painterly style. This initial layer introduces visitors to a dimension suspended between history, myth, and imagination, preparing them for the immersive experience that follows.
Inside, the experience unfolds as a symbolic descent into the depths of the sea. The first room is dedicated to the abyss: here, surfaces, reflections, and materials evoke a fluid, rarefied environment in which silver sturgeons and pieces from the collection emerge as luminous presences. It is not a simple display, but an atmospheric construction, where light and matter interact to create a sense of suspension and silence.
The heart of the project is the second room, conceived as a vast submerged banquet. A sinuous table, shaped like a wave, hosts the entire Caviar collection, placing it within an imagined landscape made of currents, glimmers, and chromatic depths. Here, Hall’s work becomes fully narrative: the walls come alive with figures and scenes spanning different eras, from ancient Rome to the Renaissance, and even Milanese legends such as the banquet designed by Leonardo da Vinci for Ludovico il Moro. What emerges is a layered narrative in which Buccellati’s artisanal tradition, with its iconic beadwork motif, is reinterpreted as an element capable of traversing time, transforming from a technical detail into a symbolic language.
Aquae Mirabiles is, in this sense, much more than an installation: it is a complex narrative construction in which the brand becomes cultural material, and the experience takes shape as a journey between aesthetics, history, and imagination.
Frédéric Malle x Pietro Terzini
In the heart of Milan, the boutique of Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle is transformed into an immersive space through an intervention by Pietro Terzini, giving life to a project that brings visual language and olfactory memory into dialogue.
Everything begins with a question: what does that which we never forget smell like? A reflection that takes shape in the reinterpretation of five iconic fragrances from the maison, Portrait of a Lady, Carnal Flower, Musc Ravageur, Promise, and Contre-Jour, through as many visual works conceived by Pietro Terzini.
The artist, known for his direct and often ironic use of language, constructs a visual system in which words become images and images become statements. His intervention is not limited to an aesthetic operation, but acts on the very perception of perfume itself, translating something immaterial into immediate and recognizable visual signs.
The boutique thus becomes an immersive environment dominated by an intense palette: deep reds, pinks, and reflective surfaces, where every element contributes to the construction of a synesthetic experience. Visitors do not simply observe or smell, but enter a space in which the senses overlap and intertwine.
The project also extends to the product itself: the fragrances are presented in a limited edition with packaging redesigned by the artist, accompanied by objects and activations designed to amplify the experience, such as tote bags and signed prints distributed during in-store events.
In this case, the collaboration works because it brings into tension two seemingly distant languages: niche perfumery and contemporary text-based art, finding a point of contact in the realm of memory. Perfume, like Terzini’s words, becomes a device that lingers, that imprints itself, that constructs identity.
Intimissimi x Andrea Crespi
On Via Montenapoleone, the Intimissimi boutique is completely transformed through Beauty Begins Inside, a site-specific installation by Andrea Crespi and curated by Sandie Zanini.
The project takes shape from a reinterpretation of Canova’s Venus Italica, presented at life scale but completely transformed through the artist’s language. Andrea Crespi constructs the figure through a continuous line that never closes: a mark that flows across the body without touching itself, suggesting form rather than defining it, leaving space for emptiness, absence, and perception.
The choice of material is central: the sculpture is made of sand, a fragile and unstable substance that introduces a reflection on time, impermanence, and transformation. In this way, the Venus loses its classical and monumental dimension to become something alive, exposed to change, and closer to the contemporary condition.
The intervention is not limited to the central sculpture, but extends to the entire boutique space. The shop windows become extensions of the work, with sandy surfaces and mirrors that reflect and multiply the image, creating a continuous dialogue between inside and outside, between observer and object.
Inside, the play of reflections amplifies the perception of form, turning the visit into an immersive journey in which the body, whether real or represented, becomes the focal point of the experience.
The project fits seamlessly within the brand’s vision, yet avoids any didactic interpretation: femininity is not represented as an idealized image, but as a process, as a relationship between presence and perception, between strength and vulnerability.
Beyond the product: when the brand becomes storytelling
These three collaborations clearly highlight an increasingly central direction in Design Week: one in which brands no longer limit themselves to presenting products, but instead choose to work with artists to construct narratives, visions, and imaginaries.
It is precisely in this hybrid space, between art, design, and communication, that some of the most interesting projects on Milan’s contemporary scene are emerging today.
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