The Wallpaper* Design Issue comes with our Salone del Mobile must-sees

The May 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is on sale now, taking in Milan Design Week, the Venice Biennale, and a very stylish tea party

Wallpaper* May 2025 covers side by side
Left, on the newsstand cover, the Arlecchino train designed by Gio Ponti serves as the backdrop to the fourth edition of Formafantasma’s Prada Frames symposium during Milan Design Week 2025. Right, Loewe tea pots on our limited-edition subscriber cover
(Image credit: Newsstand cover photography (left): Federico Ciamei)

Besides assembling the panoply of products, people and presentations that marks our annual celebration of Milan’s Salone del Mobile – this year taking place 8-13 April – the Wallpaper* Design Issue underscores one of the key principles that has made Salone the world’s pre-eminent player in its field for more than 60 years: namely, the need for making, and maintaining, connections.

Fortuitously, for our cover, Prada Frames – the symposium launched by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma as an antidote to the hustle and bustle of the world’s largest design fair – reflects the same concern, this year gathering a cohort of thinkers to examine ‘infrastructure through the lens of movement’ in a waiting room at Milano Centrale station, and aboard Arlecchino, a Gio Ponti-designed train recently resurrected by Fondazione FS Italiane. It’s to the latter we were drawn when choosing our newsstand cover, as a beautifully realised precursor to what it means to truly travel, and therefore connect, in style.

But it serves merely as a jumping-off point for a wider exploration of what connection means in the hands of creatives: whether it’s in the hand-me-down form of heritage as established by 14 design companies celebrating a founding anniversary this year (together representing a total of 905 years of inspiration and resilience), or the multinational, multidisciplinary melting pot created by Shalini Misra in the Shakti Design Residency initiative, a free-flowing exchange of ideas feels more urgent than ever.

The exchanges go on: we profile Faye Toogood’s collaboration with Japanese porcelain manufacturer Noritake, and reveal some of the work of the 25 artists, designers and architects commissioned by Loewe for a Salone project that considers the cross-cultural and ritualistic nature of tea.

For good measure, we visit another creative heartland once served by the Arlecchino – Venice – to profile three studios readying themselves for the opening of the Architecture Biennale. All aboard!


Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

The May 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 3 April 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Bill Prince is a journalist, author, and editor-in-chief of Wallpaper* and The Blend. Prior to taking up these roles, he served for 23 years as the deputy editor of British GQ. In addition to editing, writing and brand curation, Bill is an acknowledged authority on travel, hospitality and men's style. His first book, ‘Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon’ – a tribute to the Audemars Piguet watch at 50 – was published by Assouline in September 2022.