‘Women run the world’, the poet Beyoncé as soon as mentioned. Within the design world, although, feminine creatives are nonetheless sadly underrepresented and under-recognised. Progress is being made, however the design and structure professions are traditionally male-dominated – and nice work created by ladies usually doesn’t make it to highlight-level at main design occasions.
Wallpaper* goals to redress that imbalance. In Milan, the place our editors are at the moment on the bottom reviewing all that is noteworthy throughout Design Week 2026, we preserve observe of the achievements of unimaginable feminine creatives within the metropolis – from Salone del Cellular president Maria Porro, injecting new concepts into one of many oldest design establishments in Italy, to trend-setting curator Valentina Ciuffi, whose Alcova has change into an instance of championing creativity from all corners of the career, and doyenne of collectible design Nina Yashar (watch our Floor Report interview), whose galleries Nilufar and Nilufar Depot are among the many most vital locations to find design.
We even have a cautious lens on the work that Patricia Urquiola is doing at Cassina, when it comes to each innovation and championing an rising technology of creatives; and the electrical power with which Visionnaire artwork director Eleonore Cavalli finds probably the most thrilling methods to shake up her firm’s sturdy heritage (by way of sudden collaborations with the likes of steel stalwart NM3, for instance).
Right here, we collect a small listing, spotlighting simply a few of the ladies whose work has outlined this 12 months’s Milan Design Week. For a lot of extra, observe our protection on Wallpaper.com, the place you’ll discover the likes of Federica Biasi and her respectful interpretation of Maddalena De Padova’s legacy; the inimitable Bethan Laura Wooden, reinterpreting Baccarat’s baroque and subverting its guidelines; and Nao Tamura and her sculptural origami furnishings for Porro that go away us marvelling at her inventive gestures each time we encounter them.
9 feminine creatives to know at Milan Design Week 2026
Faye Toogood
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Tacchini)
Faye Toogood is the queen of prototyping, and this Milan Design Week has made it even clearer that the British designer is the most effective in relation to visualising concepts in compact methods. We’re significantly keen on her mini carved butter sofas, a prelude to her assortment of seating for Tacchini (aptly referred to as ‘Butter’ and comprising completely different modular parts, or ‘slabs of butter’: a three-seater couch, an armchair and a storage unit). However her miniature-making prowess was additionally evident within the completely compact ‘Lie Low’ mattress, for Poltrona Frau, and the folded paper experiments that symbolize her ‘Crease’ assortment for Meritalia, impressed by flat-pack constructions.
And whereas the life-size variations of those furnishings design ideas are magnificent in their very own proper, seeing the concepts unfold in small scale (and in such imaginative, expressive methods) all the time places a smile on our face.
Linde Freya Tangelder
(Picture credit score: Eline Willaert)
The work of Belgian designer Linde Freya Tangelder (also referred to as Destroyers Builders) is a strong whisper. Through the years, the designer has constructed an aesthetic identification that’s unmistakably hers, primarily based on a model of minimalism that’s multi-material and takes modularity to sudden horizons. At Milan Design Week 2026, Tangelder and Cassina staged a show at 10 Corso Como titled ‘Fluid Re-Assortment’, an immersion into her inventive world that features her furnishings, objects and examine fashions positioned in dialog with the lighting design she has been creating with the Italian firm since 2022.
Ambra Medda with Amy Tai
(Picture credit score: Pictures: Joseph Alexiadis. Courtesy AMO)
‘I like being a part of a metropolis that’s altering and evolving at such velocity,’ mentioned design curator Ambra Medda, who just lately moved again to Milan from her longtime base in London. Her new inventive house within the metropolis hosts its inaugural exhibition, co-curated with design historian Amy Tai, bringing collectively the ceramic work of Greek designer Leda Athanasopoulou and textiles by the Chinese language artist Yumo Yuan.
Learn our interview with Ambra Medda
Elisa Ossino
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Molteni & C)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Molteni & C)
Elisa Ossino’s secret backyard with Molteni & C is a much-needed oasis of peace in the course of Milan (‘What an exquisite reward to the town’, we overheard somebody say on our go to firstly of Milan Design Week). Titled ‘Responsive Nature’, the verdant set up takes over Backyard Senato in a method that’s each poetic and in addition a stage to showcase the corporate’s new outside collections (together with new items by Ossino herself). By means of 5 environments, Molteni & C’s furnishings is ready amid tropical crops, architectural ruins overgrown with foliage and water options that make you’re feeling like you have got left the town and have stepped into an otherworldly pure paradise.
Kelly Wearstler
(Picture credit score: Gemma Warren)
Kelly Wearstler, queen of the maximalist inside, made her Milan Design Week debut to launch a brand new furnishings assortment designed in tandem with H&M Dwelling. ‘We nonetheless had numerous boundaries,’ she instructed us. ‘Every bit needed to be modular, nevertheless it pushed us to be extra inventive.’ Whereas all of the objects within the assortment really feel distinctive, Wearstler was additionally eager that they work with any surroundings. ‘I wished to function below the ethos of simply providing nice accessible design.’ Launching in 28 markets, the gathering contains chairs, tables and lamps, in addition to a collection of tabletop objects, starting from picket vases to consuming glasses. Anybody who has visited one in all Wearstler’s luxurious lifestyle-forward Correct resorts will instantly recognise her distinctive aesthetic.
Learn our interview with Kelly Wearstler
Marta Sala
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Marta Sala)
Milanese gallerist Marta Sala based her namesake firm, Marta Sala Éditions, in 2015, with the intention of constructing a platform devoted to limited-run design collections rooted in architectural rigour and materials precision. Eleven years on, that imaginative and prescient has been fully realised – in no small half due to her longstanding collaborations with a few of the most exacting figures in design. At Milan Design Week 2026, she launched a brand new assortment with Herzog & de Meuron, making its debut on the inaugural version of Salone Raritas.
Learn our interview with Marta Sala
Natalia Criado
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of the artist and designer)
Since founding her eponymous model in 2018, the Milan-based, Colombia-born designer Natalia Criado has been creating a physique of labor that reads as each purposeful object and sculpture. This 12 months at Milan Design Week, Criado labored with Laboratorio Paravicini – the Milanese ceramics model run by Costanza Paravicini and her three daughters, Benedetta, Margherita and Bona, identified for his or her deftly hand-illustrated ceramics. ‘I had been conscious of their work for a while, and what drew me in was not solely the craftsmanship, however the construction behind it, a family-run studio largely composed of ladies,’ Criado says.
Learn our interview with Natalia Criado
Sophie Lou Jacobsen
(Picture credit score: Jen Steele)
For the previous a number of months, New York glassware designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen has been spending increasingly more time in Milan, creating her newest assortment impressed by the famed native aperitivo tradition. ‘In New York, we’ve got joyful hour, and in France, there may be apéro, however aperitivo is a ritual actually ingrained into every day life in Milan,’ says the designer, who aptly titled the gathering ‘Disco Aperitivo’, a nod to the Nineteen Eighties fashion that also defines most of the metropolis’s historic bars.
Learn our interview with Sophie Lou Jacobsen
Lina Ghotmeh
(Picture credit score: © Nathalie Krag)
Lebanese-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmehhas constructed a repute for immersive, site-responsive work, and was additionally behind some of the anticipated installations of Milan Design Week, at Palazzo Litta, remodeling the historic constructing’s courtyard into completely different pockets of calm, tradition and dialog throughout a frenetic week. ‘At a time when the world is bombarded from a number of standpoints, I wished a spot that cherishes pleasure and human connection. It’s a setting that lightly slows individuals down and permits them to have interaction with each other and with the place round them,’ she explains.
Learn our interview with Lina Ghotmeh
See our information to what’s on at Milan Design Week 2026 (till 26 April), and observe the adventures of our editors on the bottom in our reside Milan weblog.
Supply: Wallpaper
