MILAN — In 1961, 13 furniture firm executives founded what is now known as Salone del Mobile.Milano, by far the world’s biggest high-end design trade show.
One of those founding fathers was Carlo Porro, grandfather of Maria Porro, who at 38 years old is now Salone del Mobile.Milano’s first female president. When she’s not organizing the event that attracts more than 300,000 visitors each year, she’s also the mother of three children and the current marketing and communications director of the Brianza-based family-run furniture firm her great-grandfather Giulio started with his brother Stefano in 1925.
Tasked with exporting the fair abroad, she’s most recently traveled with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to Saudi Arabia, where she signed a memorandum of understanding with the Saudi Arabian Architecture and Culture Commission, paving the way for a Saudi edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano. A teaser of the Saudi fair will take place in fall 2025, while the actual fair is expected to bow in fall 2026.
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Since being appointed president in 2021 at the height of the pandemic, she’s dealt with a few other blows, including firms opting to show in their new showrooms rather than at the fairgrounds: Design Holding’s Maxalto, French luxury player Roche Bobois and Luxury Living brands Luxence and Versace Home are among the companies that have opted to turn the focus to their Milan showrooms and flagships and other central venues. Molteni&C’s main collections will be shown in its brand new Via Manzoni showroom, just for this year, according to sources. Other founding firms like Visionnaire said they are committed to Salone for the long term.
According to its list of exhibitors, Natuzzi, one of Italy’s biggest furniture companies by revenue, will showcase again at the fair. Historic brands like Memphis, Meritalia e Gufram under Italian Radical Design group and Poltronova came back in 2024 after being absent for years. Newcomers include Dutch furniture firm Moooi and U.K.-based luxury bed-maker Vispring. Moooi is slated to open its first Milan showroom this year. This year’s fair will also see the return of crystal design firm Swarovski.
“So, the trend is toward a more international fair, even in its exhibitors. There are many high-level companies, both premium and important brands, that didn’t participate before but are participating this year,” Porro told WWD, adding that this year will see 168 first-time exhibitors at Salone del Mobile.Milano, 68 percent of which are from abroad. The fair will also have 91 returning exhibitors, of which 55 percent are from abroad.
After the post-pandemic boom, turnover of Italy’s wood furnishing sector slipped 8.1 percent in 2023 to 52.6 billion euros. In 2024, it slid further 2.9 percent to 51.7 billion euros, dragged down by domestic sales, which represented more than 62 percent of the total. Exports fell 2.1 percent and account for 38 percent of all of Italy’s wood furnishing sales, according to Federlegno Arredo the Italian Federation of the Woodworking and furniture industries. Its president Claudio Feltrin, decried Trump’s 20 percent tariffs on European imports would be penalizing for both the U.S. and Italy. “Our hope is that the worst-case scenario is avoided,” he said Thursday.
“It’s clear that, at the moment, Europe is definitely in a phase of slowdown, or at least not growing, with a few rare exceptions. The United States is a consolidated, stable market that still has a positive outlook, where the question mark about tariffs is an open issue, but it’s a very important market because there are cities and states that still don’t have furniture distribution, so there is still a lot to build there,” she said, adding that China is slowly recovering and Southeast Asia is experiencing a new spring.
Reigniting consumer confidence in Italian furniture and design is a challenge many design firms here face, as they chart the ongoing era of uncertainty, exacerbated by ongoing wars and high inflation. But Porro said the Gulf region is primed for more growth.
“The Gulf area and especially Saudi Arabia is especially promising. These countries are still constructing new cities and for this reason furniture companies are very important to these areas. There is a complete lack of production and industry there, so they really need everything, right?” she enthused adding that these grand scale projects need the kind of 360-degree outfitting that Salone exhibitors can provide — from flooring to surfaces. The other region that poses serious opportunities for Salone del Mobile.Milano and its constituents is India, where renowned designers, architects and interior designers are taking part in global projects.
“Will there be an event in India? We’ll see. We’re not ready to talk about this but it’s definitely a geographic area we are looking at right now for its market potential,” she said, commenting on the uptick of its presence, for example, in New Delhi, organized within the framework of the prestigious India Art Fair and welcomed to the Italian Cultural Institute. Salone del Mobile.Milano is currently focused on bringing interesting Indian exhibitors and interior designers and operators to the fair in Milan.
While Porro and her team hosted events in New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai last year, the last foreign edition of the fair took place at the Shanghai Exhibition Center before the COVID-19 pandemic and was envisaged as a showcase for Made in Italy products and the Italian way of living in Shanghai. It remains to be seen whether organizers will see the fair return to China.
In addition to global expansion, Porro has been focused on infusing the Milan fair with an unmissable “wow” factor. Last year she and her team convinced late film director David Lynch to unveil one of his last works at Salone del Mobile.Milano. “Interiors by David Lynch. A Thinking Room” was designed by Lynch and his team and incorporated a narration and reflection on the production of interiors.
Porro, who studied scenography, said the fair has renewed its commitment to linking the worlds of design with that of film like never before. To usher in the 63rd edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano and the 32nd edition of the Euroluce light exhibition, running Tuesday to April 13, organizers tapped Academy Award-winning director Paolo Sorrentino to design a site-specific installation to greet visitors in pavilions 22 and 24. Named “La Dolce Attesa [The Sweet Wait],” it is shaping up to be a timeless “waiting” area created with set designer Margherita Palli and centered around the idea of “meeting one’s destiny.”
With the same sense of elan, American director Robert Wilson is expected to unveil a showcase within the Museo della Pietà at Milan’s Sforzesco castle that will incorporate dance, painting, design, movement, lights and drama and express his own “vision” of the power of one of Michelangelo’s last works: the Pietà Rondanini.
British contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin will kick off celebrations with a showcase of her mastery of light staged in the 17th century Cortile d’Onore, which connects the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Braidense National Library and the Academy of Fine Arts.
Porro doesn’t want to just excite visitors — she wants to give them a really good reason to visit Milan and come back again.
“It is one of the most important works of art we have in Italy, and very few people see it,” she said of the Pietà Rondanini. “To show how design and the design of light and space can create more attention to something that exists, and to enhance it more, I think it is a way of producing content, telling a story, because the quality of the project must also play a role in spaces,” she said of the abundance of unsung treasures Milan has to offer. “And this is the goal: to help these 370,000 visitors find the roast, not just the smoke. Hello, this is Italy. Yes!”