Really honest takes on Salone/design week
+How not to behave as a guest of a members club
Hi everyone -
I’m just on the heels of design week, which felt quite different to previous design weeks, and not in a good way!
Most brands did not do great activations or exhibitions. To be honest, most of them might have been better off by not doing anything at all. I won’t name any names, but if you were actually there (and not just consuming Salone content through a screen or through a paid journalist), you’ll know exactly which ones I’m referring to. I’m hearing a lot of the same feedback from other generally discerning people that this year’s design week felt like a desperate attention grab or a “who’s cooler than who” contest. Of course, these elements are always present in any fashion or design week, but with the very recent news of the tariffs and the fact that several fashion brands don’t have the same budgets serve as the two “why now?” bullet points as to why this year’s design week was mostly underwhelming (save for a few stand out exhibits).
The fact that each big fashion brand had lines around the block comprising mostly people who truly do not care about the art and just want cheap and free brand merch to post on their social media as a signal make it hard for these brands to be credible to a discerning audience. Since when was it about reaching for the highest number of social media impressions and not about reaching the right audience that can move the revenue needle for you?
For example, yesterday I went to the Miu Miu Literary Club. It was executed well in the sense that the venue and the performances were brilliant. I loved the concept, but hated the type of crowd that sort of activation attracts. During one of the performances, a young man read his beautiful and vulnerable poetry on stage while the audience continued to talk over him and carry on with their free cocktails and finger food. It actually annoyed me that the guests were so disrespectful to the performers and yet are there in their “Miu Miu intellectual” outfits for the purpose of posting about being at a Miu Miu event. It was the performative nature of it all, the pretending to be intellectual and cultured, that underlined most of my observations of the relationship between brand and audience throughout the week.
Another example was Etro, which gave out free stools to celebrate 40 years of their signature Arnica fabric. On the same day, you could find people selling the stools on Vinted for €200. Do these people genuinely want to support Etro? Do they care about the brand’s history and will they buy from the store? Likely not.
It’s tough to be “inclusive”, because when you let just about anyone into your brand world, stuff like this happens, but you do want be accessible for everyone to enjoy it. I hope to see better crowd control and more creative risk taking at next year’s events.
The best part of my week were my one-on-one meetings with several of you. The meetings were mostly productive, but I just wanted to remind some of you that if you are invited as a guest of someone’s club, please remember that members clubs are not public restaurants and to treat the wait staff with respect. Also remember that first impressions do make a difference and that business is an island.
In today’s newsletter: my top 5 Italian interior design studios, distressed fashion M&A, restaurant sizing, a new hospitality x fashion collab, and more…
As always, you can read previous issues of The Stanza here.
