Soft Geometries, 70s Revivals, and Other Statement Trends Spotted at Milan Design Week 2025
by Elliman Insider Team
May 2025
For someone as smart (and yes, obsessed) about contemporary design as Kevin Leciejewski, the annual Salone del Mobile in Milan can resemble five days and nights spent in a fever dream. The 63rd edition of this renowned and massive global trade show proved no exception.
Held April 8-13 at the sprawling Fiera Milano exhibition center, coinciding with Milan Design Week, which transformed the city’s many showrooms—along with satellite activations in storied piazzas, gated courtyards, and grand palazzos—into a wonderland of cutting-edge design.
“You can simply wander throughout the city and find inspiration around every corner,” says Leciejewski, who is Senior Vice President and Creative Director at Douglas Elliman Development Marketing (DEDM) and easily logged more than 20,000 steps a day.
It’s all in service of his charge to keep DEDM’s developments at the vanguard of cutting edge design – discovering future opportunities to work with international brands while strengthening existing relationships -- resulting in exciting new model residence, innovative turn-key programs, and perspective of the latest kitchen and bath design trends to enrich the pre-development design phases of the DEDM portfolio.
“No one else in our industry has someone who expertly focuses in this space like me,” Leciejewski notes with a mix of pride and modesty. “It definitely gives DEDM an edge in a very competitive field.” Given how easily that edge could dull, it’s a big responsibility and a key reason Leciejewski makes it a habit of scouring Milan every year in April.
Weeks after his return he was still buzzing. When I asked about his overall reaction and what trends he spotted, he didn’t hesitate: “My major takeaway from visiting as many places as I could is that the nostalgic re-embrace of the 1970s has reached new heights—and, more importantly, new levels of sophistication.”
He explained that designers are not simply replicating the colors from that period—the oranges, burgundies, beiges, and chocolate browns—but are instead using them with bolder, more natural materials. Modularity, glossy finishes, and reissuing of iconic designs from the period were hallmarks.
“There were tactile tabletops made of honed marble with soft curvature, resplendent in these natural bold colors that were such knockouts,” he recounts. The sensory overload was heightened by the array of new textiles featuring bold, soft, and tactile fabrics like bouclé, velvets, and some geometric prints.
And then there’s the resurgence of chrome. Case in point: Jil Sander’s new collaboration with Thonet in her subtle re-imaging of two Bauhaus design classics. It was the famous fashion designer’s first foray into furniture design.
While it was exciting for Leciejewski to discover what was fresh, he was also reconnecting with the vendors he works with on a day-to-day basis. DEDM has longstanding relationships with Molteni, Artemest, B&B Italia, Boffi, Flexform, and Armani Casa, among others, whose designs are integral to such development projects as Waldorf Astoria Residences New York and The Greenwich by Rafael Viñoly.
(Clockwise from top left: Kevin Leciejewski with Orane Abézis, Design Director of B&B Italia USA; Giorgio Armani; Armani's Oriental Inks collection, presented in-store at 14 Corso Venezia on the 25th anniversary of Armani/Casa.)
Venturing into the offerings at Milan Design Week, the Elliman design aficionado made his way to the 19th-century Palazzo Donizetti, where Artemest invited six international design studios to reimagine the Palazzo’s grand rooms using furniture, art, and lighting from the brand’s own legendary stable of artisans. Leciejewski was dazzled by the room filled with a handblown Murano glass chandelier and collection of Venetian mirrors with some truly extraordinary sculptural floor lamps.
Another big hit was Dimoremilano’s immersive installation for Loro Piana titled “La Prima Notte di Quiete," where the firm’s founders, Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci, turned Loro’s headquarters into a super-groovy period pad complete with plush wall-to-wall shag carpeting, on which they placed exceptional new furniture from Loro Piana Interiors—exaggerated sofa sets, curving in all directions and covered with the finest quality cashmere, wool, silk and velvet textiles whose colors ranged from teal green to steel to orange. There was even a sunken sofa in one room!
Milan Design Week is known to feature throngs of visitors in the Brera Design Distict, and this year felt supercharged. Leciejewski was stunned by Loewe’s Ode to the Teapot (as were many others, judging by the fashionably attired mobs outside). The Spanish firm charged 25 internationally renowned artists, designers, and architects to reimagine the prosaic vessel’s sculptural form. Leciejewski pronounced it “extraordinary.”
One of the more cerebral moments was the exhibit from the Milanese luxury fabric house Dedar, which partnered with the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation to bring Anni Albers’s legendary textile works into a new era, balancing fidelity to her artistic vision with modern manufacturing innovation. “Breathtaking and beautiful,” said Leciejewski.
It’s a lot to process. Since his return from Milan, he’s been steeped in all the new trends and concepting ways to integrate the newly acquired intel – dreaming up future partnerships and forging new connections to bring world-class design to DEDM’s discerning audiences. We’ll just have to wait and see how all the shapes, colors, and shag carpeting filter through Elliman’s design consciousness and find their way into future developments.
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