By Ella Riley-Adams
This year, Milan’s Salone del Mobile design fair, which concluded on Sunday, returned to its prepandemic schedule. It was a welcome change for attendees, who were able to take in not only a vast array of furniture and décor but also the beauty of spring in Italy. (Last year’s fair was postponed and happened during a particularly sweltering June.) Glimpsed from crowded sidewalks, the city’s courtyards looked more verdant and welcoming than ever. And the week’s events and exhibitions had a similar appeal, offering access to spaces that aren’t always easy to see — T’s annual Salone party, for example, gave guests the chance to wander the Villa Necchi Campiglio at night — as well as moments of unexpected enchantment. Here, a few things that left a lasting impression.
Misha Kahn’s Glossy and Squishy Book Covers
On Wednesday night, a crowd gathered at a pop-up bookstore organized by the interiors magazine Apartamento for a party to celebrate the designer Misha Kahn’s monograph, “Casually Sauntering the Perimeter of Now.” Ahead of Kahn’s first solo gallery exhibition at Friedman Benda in Los Angeles later this month, the book looks at 10 years of his work with photographs of finished products — among them a bronze table aptly titled Tingle Tangle Mingle Mangle and a couch of interlocking earthen-colored squiggles called Mole Eats Worm — alongside sketches and images of works in progress. The text, which includes conversations between Kahn (who is the partner of T editor at large Nick Haramis) and other creative people, including the fashion designer Dries Van Noten and the curator Su Wu, is overlaid with handwritten annotations from Kahn himself. For the Milan event, the designer made 50 otherworldly dust jackets, some in puffy cast foam, others embedded with extraterrestrial-looking glass globs; a pillowy version made of shiny red resin was heavier than it looked. But even those who can’t get their hands on a dust jacket can enjoy his playful use of materials: The book itself is covered in pink velvet.
