Italian furniture exports fell by 13.1% in January 2026. The United States is down 28.5%. China, -46.6%. Germany, -18.4%. If the domestic market holds, the international one is collapsing. For decades, we brought Brianza to every corner of the planet. Now the planet raises tariffs, closes ports, looks elsewhere. And we turn back to Brianza.

And yet, very little of this is discussed at the Salone. At the Fuorisalone, not at all. In the city, the preference is for debating experience, activation, immersive journeys. Portable archives, emotional showcases, fusion catering, VIP happenings. All staged in courtyards where objects—things, tools—were once produced, and that seem to still be there but, in fact, are no longer. Because in the city that invented figural thinking, polytechnic knowledge, the ofelé fa el tu mesté, the word “Salone” has never been more powerful: never has it opened so many doors, sparked so much desire, ignited so much curiosity.

At the same time, the word “furniture” has never been so absent from the conversation. Replaced by event, installation, capsule, limited edition, home accessories. And the chairs? The tables? The sinks? Who knows.

If we set aside the excellence of Brianza—the famous brands that founded the Salone and have always maintained a complex relationship with it—Design Week has, over the years, distanced itself from furniture, even physically. It has become the Salone of fashion, of automotive, of finance, of recycling. And of an endless series of sub-manufactures, difficult to classify within the taxonomies of traditional furnishings, let alone conceptual ones.

At the Salone del Mobile, it is increasingly difficult to find furniture—not because of disciplinary crossovers, which are always a positive. Rather because other disciplines—pardon, industries—are stronger, more pervasive, richer, and capable of overturning every hierarchy, real and imagined. Rewriting not only the aesthetics—and thus the ethics—of Design Week, but above all its ontology.

At Salone del Mobile 2026, it truly feels as though the prophecy of Jean Baudrillard has come to pass. In Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), he explained what would happen to production. After the stage of use value—when objects were defined by function and utility—after the stage of exchange value—when objects were defined by their market equivalent and the logic of capital—after the era of sign value, when objects signify within a system of meanings (a chair no longer serves or costs, but tells who owns it, to which class they belong, what taste they display)—Baudrillard argued we had entered the most radical phase: the fractal or viral stage of value.

In this condition, the object—long detached from any criterion of utility—is no longer even a sign. It has lost any social reference, severed its ties with any system of signifiers. It now proliferates upon itself, refracting and replicating endlessly. Without logic, without hierarchy, without destination.

This is the phase of pure simulation—our phase. The declared end of the “production of objects” and the beginning of the “seduction of objects.” Objects that seem to serve no purpose and refer to nothing, yet circulate and multiply among themselves, incessantly, without pause. It is no coincidence that this year sees the emergence of Salone Raritas—a counterpoint to the epidemic of virality, and a romantic attempt to reverse the trend, first symbolically, then in use, and finally in matter.

A return to order driven by nostalgia—impossible, yet fascinating. Collectible design, limited editions, gallery practices in dialogue with industrial production. The exhibition is serious, curated, necessary. The pieces are conceived as lanterns that illuminate—and they truly do—but the message is the opposite: the shipwreck of the real in the virtual is complete, and the crime is perfect, to quote Baudrillard again.
The object no longer holds value for what it does, what it costs, or what it means—but for having dissolved and refracted into a myriad of signifiers detached from any meaning. Thus, the table becomes a document, the kitchen a metaphor, the sofa a promise. Often unfulfilled—but that hardly matters. Perhaps it is even better this way.

In this new dimension, Rem Koolhaas signs the masterplan for Salone Contract. And for a moment, there is air again. A stroke of genius, without doubt. With OMA/AMO, design returns to being process, vision, coordination of systems at scales that once again extend beyond the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom—now reduced to postmodern versions of that bourgeois interior stretched from Seattle to Auckland.
At Salone Contract, we are well beyond the idea of “home” as a meta-place of identity. Whether this is a direction or simply another inauguration remains to be seen. But at least here, one could breathe.

Thirteen kilometres away, in the heart of a city turned platform, Fuorisalone 2026 adopted the theme “Be the Project.” A beautiful phrase. Excellent copywriting. Also because the subject remains ambiguous: who is speaking? The city? The designer? The brand? The Salone organisation? Or the collective unconscious—that revenant that appears when least expected, from the most unlikely places? Once again, it is useful to return to French thought of the 1970s and ’80s. 

Milan is no longer the laboratory of creativity, the supply chain of design; it has become a programming grid of activations, a microphysics of power where the emotional has merged with the digital and replaced capital—which, indeed, languishes this year. 

Going further back, and returning to Italy, it feels like the revenge of the seventeenth-century dream of Sebastiano Serlio. Every courtyard is a stage, every palazzo a temporary concept, every square a museum. The only difference is that here, the collections are not always up to the setting. But who sees them? And who knows—or wants—to judge them?

Just before the curtain falls on Design Week 2026, after a day that has never felt so summery, a sharp sensation takes shape. Fuorisalone has definitively metabolised the Salone, importing into the city meetings, happenings, presentations, events, personalities often eccentric to the dynamics of furniture. 

After all, Fuorisalone responds far better than the Salone to the logic of the fourth stage of value, conceived within the viral dimension of the object, which increasingly becomes a point of intersection for real estate assets, temporary rentals, property operations.

No one says it out loud, because it would be like admitting that the village fair has overtaken the cathedral ritual. And besides, the Salone is far away, out there in the phalansteries of Fuksas in Rho, where it is still unclear what will become of the Expo area. Certainly, those who make the effort to go to the fairgrounds can still glimpse what remains of “substance.” But “accident” remains the narrative. And it is narrative that constructs the existing order. At Fuorisalone as everywhere.

The analysis would not be complete without acknowledging that all of this is not only inevitable, but also good and proper. It is the result of an increasingly sophisticated and attentive direction, embodied by the Porro–Feltrin duo, who demonstrate a deep understanding not only of global market practice, but also of the theory of how the world will be used. When traditional channels close, one responds with the hype of narrative. If the chair cannot be shipped to the United States, it becomes an installation. If the lamp finds no market, it meets a gallery. If the object does not sell, one attempts to commodify the sensation of needing it. It is an economic response disguised as cultural evolution.

Not only is it legitimate—it is brilliant. 

And yet everything moves forward. New routes exist—Turkey, Canada, Africa, Australia, even America—but they require a different kind of conversation. More direct. Less scenographic. Therefore, less Italian. And today, Milan is the most Italian of a hundred cities.

Before concluding, there is one fact—this one objective—that withstands any critical reading. And it should be stated with equal clarity and pride, especially by those who criticise Milan and the Salone/Fuorisalone. For one week, thanks to the evocative power of design and above all to the skilful staging of the directors of the “Salone del Mobile” megamachine, Milan becomes the omphalos of the world.

Salone Raritas is a beautiful lantern. But lanterns illuminate the road only if the road exists. Here, the roads are gone. We are in the desert of the real—or, if we prefer, in the epidemic of the imaginary. Someone still needs to measure the chair. To determine whether it holds weight. To understand where it belongs. Preferably someone who uses the chair. Better still, someone who knows how to use it.