At Milan Design Week, running alongside the Salone del Mobile, fashion is no longer simply present within the city. It is actively shaping how interiors are conceived, staged, and experienced.

What’s striking this year is not the number of fashion houses participating, but the way they operate. These are not product launches in the conventional sense. They are material studies, spatial propositions, and controlled environments, closer to interiors than to merchandising.

Material as Interior Language

Loro Piana’s presentation, Studies, Chapter I: On the Plaid, reads less like a collection and more like a quiet investigation into surface and tactility. Installed at their Milan headquarters, the twenty-four pieces explore vicuña, cashmere, and linen not as textiles for garments, but as rugs, materials that define atmosphere.

What matters here is not the plaid itself, but the proposition: that the same fibres used in clothing can articulate a room with equal precision. The pieces are made to order, reinforcing an interior logic, this is not decoration, but integration.

Craft, Ritual, and Object Placement

At Prada, the focus shifts from surface to object. A series of ceramic vessels, curated by Theaster Gates, draws on the Japanese chawan - the ceremonial tea bowl tradition. These are not simply collectible pieces; they introduce ritual into the interior.

Placed within a domestic setting, such objects resist casual styling. They ask for space, for context, for intention. In that sense, Prada’s contribution is less about ceramics and more about how objects structure behaviour within a room.

Installation as Interior Prototype

Some of the most compelling contributions operate at the scale of installation, but function as prototypes for future interiors.

At Issey Miyake, Satoshi Kondo’s collaboration with Ensamble Studio transforms industrial paper waste into structural elements. The resulting forms, part column, part vessel, suggest a vocabulary where process becomes architecture.

Similarly, Bottega Veneta’s Lightful installation, developed with Kwangho Lee, uses woven leather strips to create suspended structures that filter light. These pieces hover between lighting, partition, and sculpture, objects that don’t furnish a space so much as define its boundaries and atmosphere.

The Interior as Immersive Environment

Other brands move toward total environments, where the distinction between retail, installation, and interior dissolves entirely.

Moncler’s intervention at 10 Corso Como, an inflatable octopus enveloping the façade—may appear theatrical, but it signals something more fundamental: the exterior as an extension of interior identity. The building itself becomes upholstered, its surface treated like fabric.

At Gucci, the Memoria exhibition unfolds as a sequence of rooms, tapestries, and garden elements. Rather than presenting objects, it constructs a narrative interior, where movement through space becomes the primary experience.

Soft Power and the Democratic Interior

Even at a more accessible level, the shift is evident. Zara’s Calma installation proposes a restrained, almost monastic environment, an exercise in mood rather than product. Meanwhile, H&M’s collaboration with Kelly Wearstler signals the continued merging of fashion retail with authored interior identity.

What distinguishes these projects from traditional furniture fairs is their openness. Unlike the transactional nature of fashion week, Fuorisalone operates as a distributed interior—accessible, exploratory, and largely unconcerned with immediate sales.

From Objects to Atmospheres

What emerges across the city is a subtle but important shift. Fashion brands are no longer entering the home through products alone. They are engaging with interiors as systems of materials, objects, and spatial experience.

In doing so, they are also exposing a gap within the design world itself. Where furniture has often remained typological—chair, table, sofa—these interventions operate more fluidly. They prioritise mood over type, material over form, and experience over function.

For the interior designer, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The question is no longer which pieces to place in a room, but how to think more holistically: how materials meet, how light is filtered, how objects invite use, or resist it.

And yet, for us, the most compelling exhibitions remain those grounded in essentialism: where reduction sharpens intent, where function is not an afterthought but the starting point, and where beauty emerges as a natural consequence of both. The strongest presentations did not rely on spectacle, but offered clarity—solutions that balance utility, material intelligence, and craft in equal measure.

Thank you for reading!

They had been weeks (months) in the making. Anyone who works with India knows that getting furniture in and out of the country requires patience and process — paperwork, inspections, codes, confirmations. It is never rushed, there is always a snag. But they are solvable. My partner there and I had done our due diligence. The boxes were ticked. The airway bill was issued. The pieces were finally moving from our Mumbai hub to Amsterdam.

And then geopolitics intervened.

What began as a bombing campaign involving Iran quickly widened into something far larger, a destabilising moment for the region and, inevitably, the rest of us. In Europe, the effects were first felt in petrol prices and jittery markets. Then in airspace closures. Then in freight.

Only when the shipment stalled did I learn what many logistics professionals already know: carriers such as FedEx route a significant volume of cargo from India and beyond through their Dubai hub. When airspace becomes uncertain, open one day, restricted the next, freight does not move predictably. It pauses. It reroutes. It waits.

And so, unexpectedly, a set of dining chairs became collateral in a conflict thousands of kilometres away.

War limbo

For a small design-led business, delays are rarely abstract.

They mean cancelling a viewing with a client for an interior project. They mean postponing a photo shoot that had been scheduled weeks in advance. They mean late deliveries and the uncomfortable emails that follow. They mean cash flow tied up mid-air, or not even mid-air, simply static.

Design often presents itself as serene. Controlled. Curated. We show the finished image: the chair in the Malibu dining room, the linen falling just so, the architect satisfied.

But behind that image is a web of interdependence. Workshops in Mumbai. Suppliers in Bali. Carpenters who rely on steady orders. Freight handlers in transit hubs. Customs officers. Drivers. Air traffic controllers. If one node falters, the effect cascades outward. Just look at the effect of the US-impossed tariffs.

We tend to live in our own bubbles, aesthetic, geographic, professional, but the supply chain does not. It is global by design.

If clients hesitate because they fear late deliveries, orders slow. If orders slow, ateliers feel it. Raw materials that need to move in both directions — wood, linen, hardware — are delayed. And freight is not only furniture. It is medicine. Components. Essentials. Oil, money and power may make the world go round, but they can just as easily halt it for the rest of us.

Milan will go on

Next week, I will be in Milan for Design Week. The apertivi will be poured. Installations will open. There will be beautiful objects, ambitious launches and crowded restaurants.

It will look like business as usual.

But beneath that polished surface, intentional businesses, especially smaller ones, are recalibrating quietly. Rethinking timelines. Buffering risk. Managing conversations with clients who understandably expect certainty in uncertain times.

The design world prides itself on global reach. Yet moments like this expose how dependent we are on fragile corridors of airspace and diplomacy.

The case for proximity

If there is a lesson in all of this, perhaps it is proximity.

We recently partnered with Belgium’s Collett & Victor on a series of custom pieces. The linen is sourced locally. The production is close to home. The collection will arrive on time — not because it is more beautiful (though it is), but because it does not depend on contested airspace or volatile freight routes.

Local is not always possible. Nor should global collaboration disappear, it enriches design immeasurably. But diversification matters. So does resilience.

The irony is that the very globalism that allows a chair to be crafted in Mumbai and placed in a Malibu residence is the same system that renders it vulnerable to a conflict in Iran.

We are all connected. Designers perhaps more than we realise.

For now, some of our pieces remain in what I’ve come to think of as war limbo — boxed, ready, waiting for a flight path to stabilise. When they arrive, they will carry more than craftsmanship. They will carry the imprint of a moment when the world felt suddenly smaller and more fragile.

Watch this space.

In my twenties, I had no problem dropping cash on luxury goods. I was never flashy, but I loved Prada and Helmut Lang. I bought with conviction and a credit card, even when I was earning £30 a day at my first job. Pay now, worry later. Even if life was more affordable then, the theatre of it all was part of the fun.

But values shift. Once you understand production—how garments are cut, where they are stitched, what materials actually cost—the mystique of “luxury” disappears. A Birkin is widely estimated to cost a fraction of its retail price to produce, yet sells for well over €10,000. A Patek Philippe Calatrava will set you back at least that much again, accompanied by the poetic line that you never truly own one; you merely look after it for the next generation. It’s brilliant marketing. It also subtly reframes consumption as stewardship.

And stewardship is precisely why furniture, in my view, is the more compelling investment. Not because everything appreciates—much of it does not—but because of its function, longevity and daily intimacy. A handbag that costs more than a sofa. A watch that could furnish a room. When you put it like that, the arithmetic feels almost impolite.

I bought my first authentic Pierre Jeanneret chair at auction: an office chair, modest in scale. What drew me in were the compass-shaped legs, the quiet geometry, and the patina of the teak that had deepened over half a century. There is a humility to the frame. It does not shout. It simply endures.

By now, most design-literate readers will know Pierre Jeanneret, who worked alongside his cousin Le Corbusier on the planning of Chandigarh, the modernist capital of the Indian state of Punjab. Conceived in the 1950s as a rational, forward-looking city for a newly independent nation, Chandigarh embodied principles of order, proportion and civic dignity. Concrete brise-soleils moderated the sun; grid systems organised life; monumental government buildings stood as expressions of democratic optimism.

Jeanneret did not only contribute to the architecture. He designed much of the furniture for the city’s institutions: administrative offices, libraries, assembly halls and university buildings. These were not conceived as collectibles. They were robust, locally made pieces, often in teak, designed to withstand heat, dust and heavy use. The forms were direct, almost austere—V-legs, cane seats, simple joinery. Utility first, always.

It is unlikely that Jeanneret imagined that, decades later, these very chairs would be sold through international galleries and auction houses. As recently as this year, a library table fetched more than €75,000. Many of the original pieces were discarded in the 1980s and 1990s, only to be “rediscovered” by European dealers who recognised their formal clarity and historical importance. The rest, as they say, is market history.

Naturally, the Jeanneret boom has spawned a parallel universe of reproductions. In India and beyond, workshops produce versions—some faithful, some less so. There are also pieces presented as authentic that are anything but. Personally, reproductions do not trouble me. Good design should be accessible. If the principles are respected and the description is honest, there is room in the world for both original and interpretation. Levi Strauss may have popularised the five-pocket jean, but the format belongs to the culture now and practically every fashion brand offers a version of it. Why should furniture be different, provided intellectual property is respected?

From a buyer’s perspective, the secondary market for design furniture is quietly robust. Beyond high-end platforms like 1stDibs, there is sustained demand for late 20th-century pieces—Italian seating by Flexform, lighting by Flos, and other understated brands that prioritised proportion and craftsmanship over spectacle. The 1980s and 1990s are no longer considered merely “used”; they are entering the canon.

The common denominator is quality. Pieces that age well. Workshops where joinery matters. Materials chosen not for margin but for durability. Craft is not nostalgia; it is infrastructure. When excellence is embedded at the point of making, time becomes an ally rather than an enemy.

Consider George Nakashima. His grass-seated and spindle-back chairs can take up to a year to deliver, not because a single chair requires that long at the bench, but because production remains limited and demand is steady. There are waiting lists. There is continuity. There is also a clear lineage of technique passed down through a small number of highly skilled craftspeople. That, to me, feels closer to the spirit of “you never really own this” than any slogan.

Contrast this with the controlled scarcity model perfected by houses like Hermès. It does not take six months to physically make a bag, but inventory is carefully managed—or at least perceived to be—to sustain desire. The theatre of waiting is part of the value proposition.

Yet a handbag, however exquisite, is rarely enough on its own. One does not suffice for every occasion. There is always another colour, another size, another season. The cycle encourages accumulation.

An armchair or sofa is different. It is chosen for a space, for a body, for a life. It anchors a room. It absorbs conversation, books, children, dogs, the slow drift of evenings. You do not rotate it with the seasons. You live with it. Over time, it acquires the one thing no brand can fabricate: memories.

As a collector, I am wary of the word “investment.” Markets move. Tastes shift. Liquidity is not guaranteed. But if we must use the term, I would argue for investments that serve us daily, that improve with age, and that can credibly outlast us.

A watch may be passed to the next generation in its box. A chair will have held them first.

Thank you for reading.

Me, I’ve been hooked by something else entirely: the interiors.

The sets recreating Calvin Klein’s headquarters and the couple’s downtown loft are immaculate. They were built by production designer Alex DiGerlando with set decorator Lydia Marks, who studied archival photographs and footage to recreate the quiet severity of Klein’s world in the 1990s. The offices, with their industrial shelving, glass brick and chrome furniture, echo the real spaces that defined the brand at the time.

When my best friend Paul Surridge left London in the late 90s to design for Calvin Klein, it was the brand’s absolute heyday, and I was lucky enough to visit him then. I still remember walking into the Madison Avenue flagship. Designed by John Pawson, the space felt almost ecclesiastical. Whitewashed walls, filtered light and a stripped-back shop fit created an atmosphere that was closer to a temple than a clothing store. The furnishings — black tables and pieces reminiscent of Donald Judd — formed a kind of silent architecture around the clothes.

It was almost impossible to leave without buying something.

Downstairs you would find Calvin Klein Home. Supersoft towels, bedding, glassware and crockery — all rendered in the same monochrome palette that defined the brand. I remember buying cotton bedsheets in army green and bathroom towels in pale grey. I took them back to London, filling my suitcase with what, at the time, felt like the coolest objects in America — things you could really only find in New York. They lasted nearly a decade. I have no memory of ever discarding them; most likely they disappeared somewhere during one of my international moves.

Calvin Klein had a vision and an aesthetic he rarely compromised. It defined an era of American design. The sparse décor was never cold; it simply allowed ideas to breathe and placed the focus squarely on the product. White orchids on black tables. Black coffee cups — later white ones stamped with CK. Every detail felt considered.

Klein refined this vision over decades, drawing inspiration from architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra, and the minimalist interiors of Joe D’Urso, who designed several of the company’s offices in the 1990s.

His own interiors evolved along similar lines. In the 1970s they leaned toward mid-century modernists like Marcel Breuer and Poul Kjærholm. Later came Pierre Jeanneret fireside chairs, linen slipcovered sofas and limewashed surfaces. Vintage pieces by Jean Prouvé and Le Corbusier would quietly appear. He embraced wabi sabi.

Despite shaping one of the most recognisable visual languages in American fashion, Klein has always been remarkably private about his homes. Even though he collaborated with leading architects and interior designers — from John Pawson to Axel Vervoordt, Joe D’Urso and Lorraine Letendre — he rarely allowed them to be photographed and largely avoided the kind of glossy exposure that would normally accompany such spaces.

Which means that today, much of what we know about Klein’s personal interiors survives only in fragments: construction images, archival and real estate footage, or the occasional glimpse during an event.

Perhaps that’s fitting.

Minimalism was never about spectacle. It was about restraint — and the quiet confidence of leaving things unsaid.

The spring clean isn’t the cliché we think it is. With the arrival of a new season, we naturally reassess our environments, and there’s something genuinely restorative about clearing out before summer arrives. The only cliché is the notion that this should happen just once a year, as though we’re bears emerging blinking from hibernation rather than people continuously inhabiting and reshaping our spaces.

Those of us working in design, architecture, and creative fields have already spent early January visiting trade shows, absorbing new collections, planning projects. January has always carried this particular energy—not just the newness and launches from brands, but the psychological aftermath of Christmas and December, that collective desire to begin the year with fresh clarity and purpose.

Read any newspaper or scroll through any feed these days and the news overwhelms. From Davos summits to celebrity scandals, from entrenched conflicts to emerging crises, the relentless chaos—in our lives, in our digital feeds, on television, cycling endlessly through our phones—creates in me an almost physical need to edit.

To edit out what isn’t needed. To refresh thoughtfully. I’ve just acquired a set of midcentury Swedish chairs that I’m considering keeping rather than selling—their clean lines feel like visual silence. I’m also looking at upholstering a pair of fireside Pierre Jeanneret chairs in a luscious suede, something with texture and weight. I’ve always admired the brutalist pieces Rick Owens and Michele Lamy create in their homeware range—objects that acknowledge darkness and beauty simultaneously.

I seem to have developed an acute need for filtering. In the news, in daily life, and especially at home. Does that resonate with anyone else?

In my kitchen, I’ve been slowly replacing random accumulated pieces with more intentional design—beautifully crafted cookware and tableware that will endure. My favorite finds are Japanese, and Time & Style, an extraordinary store showcasing the finest Japanese homeware, has outposts in Amsterdam and Milan. One day I may approach them about a collaboration, but in the meantime, we carry some beautiful John Pawson pieces—those incredible ceramics for the oven with minimalist walnut lids are impossibly chic—along with numerous Vincent Van Duysen designs.

The act of curating your space isn’t superficial. It’s a form of self-preservation, a way of asserting that while we can’t control the larger forces shaping our world, we can at least determine what we allow into our most intimate spaces. Every object we choose to keep or remove is a small declaration of what matters.

If you’re ready for a home or kitchen edit, I invite you to explore what we’ve gathered at platformd.co and generalgoods.net—both spaces dedicated to the kind of minimalist design that creates room to breathe rather than clutter to navigate.

In the meantime, stay well and filter to your heart’s content. There’s wisdom in knowing what to let in and what to leave out.

In fact, much of what is handcrafted improves with age. Wood deepens in tone, leather softens, stone records use. Patina is not an accident; it is the visible record of time and care. In design history, longevity has always been a marker of quality. Objects that last were not designed to follow a cycle, but to exist beyond one.

Of course, a new year does mark the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. Astrologers will describe it as a moment ripe for reflection and renewal. Even outside astrology, the calendar itself invites reassessment. We take stock, reconsider habits, make plans. But reflection does not require replacement. Renewal does not have to mean removal.

Design, by nature, is iterative. It is a process of continual adjustment rather than abrupt transformation. Homes evolve slowly. Kitchens are not replaced annually; they are updated perhaps once every decade. Bathrooms last even longer. Sofas, tables, and storage pieces often stay with us through multiple chapters of life. These objects have their own timelines, independent of the calendar year.

Interiors accumulate meaning over time. A dining table carries the memory of daily meals and occasional gatherings. A chair reveals where hands rest and bodies settle. To expect a home to reset itself every January is not only impractical, it misunderstands what domestic space is for. Homes are lived in, not versioned.

Furniture, in this way, is closer to clothing than we often admit. When you invest in well-made garments, they stop being seasonal and start becoming part of a wardrobe. A wool coat purchased ten or fifteen years ago may not be worn every winter, but it remains relevant. Its value lies not in novelty, but in reliability and fit. It earns its place.

I was reminded of this recently in a small, almost unremarkable moment. This morning, at the gym, I pulled on an old Jil Sander T-shirt from the early 2000s. It still fits. The fabric still holds. There was no functional or aesthetic reason to replace it. Its continued usefulness was quiet proof that good design resists expiration.

The same logic applies to interiors. When pieces are chosen for their material integrity, construction, and proportion, they do not age out. They settle in. They become part of the background of daily life, which is precisely where the best design belongs.

So for 2026, my intentions are not about clearing away, but about choosing carefully. If there is a need to acquire something new—a desk I have been eyeing, a coffee table to anchor a space—it will be something made with skill, from excellent materials, and with the expectation of time. Not because it is new, but because it deserves to grow old.

A new year does not ask us to erase what works. It asks us to look again, measure what we already have, and decide, deliberately, what is worth adding. That, to me, is renewal enough.

Happy New Year,

Don

I was invited to attend this year’s Fashion Fest, but I was equally drawn by the debut of Maison & Objet in Hong Kong, its first outpost outside Paris. I’ve been attending M&O twice a year for nearly a decade, so seeing it land here felt significant, almost symbolic of Hong Kong’s broader creative ambitions.

This month the city became a constellation of design moments: festivals, fairs, exhibitions, and talks layered across neighbourhoods. The recent fires cast an undeniable shadow, a rare and heavy tragedy for the city and for China at large. Out of respect, the government stepped back from several events, a thoughtful and understandable gesture.

Yet at the same time, months of planning, the international commitments, and the importance of supporting emerging designers across all sectors had to be weighed. It was reassuring to see M&O move forward, alongside many Fashion Fest programmes, with sensitivity and purpose.

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Hong Kong has no shortage of retail energy. The city’s shopping landscape is one of the most diverse and inventive in the world, with malls like K11 Musea setting new benchmarks in design and cultural cross-pollination. The skyline remains one of the most cinematic anywhere, an urban theatre of glass, light, and vertical ambition.

But for all the fashion, beauty and luxury boutiques, homeware, furniture and collectible design remain surprisingly underrepresented in mall environments. Outside of Muji - dependable, calming, and beautifully ordered in the way only the Japanese can execute - interiors barely make an appearance in prime retail spaces.

Part of this is practical: Hong Kong homes are smaller, and large furniture pieces feel out of step with daily realities. Yet everyone still needs a place to sit, sleep, gather and restore. Interiors matter, perhaps even more in compact living.

The real action in design retail happens outside malls. Wong Chuk Hang’s converted industrial buildings host contemporary furniture studios, vintage galleries and art–furniture hybrids—spaces that need volume, flexibility and character. At PMQ, craft-led homeware and local lifestyle brands create a distinctly Hong Kong design vocabulary. And in Ap Lei Chau, warehouses house European and American furniture, vintage dealers and design importers, taking advantage of generous floor plates and easy logistics.

It was this dispersed but vibrant design ecosystem that converged so beautifully at the debut of Maison & Objet Hong Kong. I discovered brands like Atelier Symbiosis and Yardcom, whose outdoor lighting and lifestyle pieces blend function with visual quietude. At the Death of Bamboo pavilion, Thai artist Korakat Aromdee

constructed an extraordinary bamboo structure, light yet strong, almost meditative, held together only by knots.

Another standout was Kazakhstan designer Daniyar Udebekov in collaboration with Belgium’s Atelier Lionel Jadot. At M&O Paris, collaborations like these can get swallowed by scale; in Hong Kong, the pace slowed just enough to really experience the poetry of the work.

And that’s perhaps the promise Hong Kong holds: a design hub that is global yet grounded, ambitious yet accessible. For all the goodwill and bridge-building, the long-term impact of these events will, of course, be measured. Visitor numbers, trade outcomes, and commercial results matter for any government agency investing in cultural infrastructure. That kind of data takes time to meaningfully accumulate.

But culturally and strategically, Hong Kong’s place on the design map is already taking shape, not as an echo of other cities, but as its own, increasingly confident voice.

Thank you for reading!

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Years ago, I lived on Fitzroy Square in London. The square itself is steeped in grandeur: Georgian façades, blue plaques honouring former residents (George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and Francis Bacon to name but a few) the kind of creamy symmetry that makes architects pause mid-stride. But I wasn’t living in one of the grand drawing rooms. I was living in a shoebox, just under 50 square metres, tucked somewhere behind all that history.

It was the first place where I had to make every square centimetre count. Not stylistically, but functionally. And that is where my real education in minimalism began.

Clarity born from constraint

When you live small in a place surrounded by architectural discipline, you start to understand proportion in a very different way. Fitzroy Square taught me that minimalism isn’t about owning less furniture — it’s about understanding space.

Every decision had to earn its place. There was room for only a small sofa, which I picked up on sale from Heal’s, and no possibility of a salon table, so I used a single side table that could move fluidly around the flat — sometimes even beside the bath. A large dining table was impossible, so I lived with a small square one and two wooden chairs.

I didn’t own a television; the idea of introducing “ugly tech” felt visually intrusive in such a compact space. Instead, I had two turntables, books and vinyl — objects that offered both function and pleasure without overwhelming the room. The bedroom held just a small cupboard and a wardrobe for clothes. That was the extent of my storage.

I learned quickly that one good chair is better than three mediocre ones.
That surfaces need breathing room.
That light does more decorating than objects ever will.

It wasn’t “minimalism” yet — just survival. But it planted the seeds.

The predecessors of the quiet life

As I began working in design, I realised what Fitzroy Square had been whispering all along. The principles I was fumbling towards had been explored for over a century:

• Japanese architecture with its reverence for emptiness and impermanence.

• Bauhaus, which stripped ornament to reveal purpose.

• Mid-century modernists like Perriand and Jeanneret, who understood that simplicity is a form of generosity.

Minimalism is often described as subtraction, but at its best it is precision — the exact amount needed for life to unfold gracefully.

Minimalism becomes intentional

Later, when I encountered the works of John Pawson, Nicolas Schuybroek, Vincent Van Duysen and the Belgian school of soft minimalism, something clicked. This wasn’t just about reduction; it was about editing. About creating rooms where material, proportion and silence do the heavy lifting.

It felt familiar.

It felt like Fitzroy Square.

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A movement softened

Today’s minimalism is less severe than the 1990s white-box aesthetic. It’s textured, tactile, almost wabi-sabi. It welcomes imperfection, a limewashed wall, veined marble, timber that tells its own history. It prioritises calm over spectacle.

And this shift brings minimalism back to its original purpose:

to make space for the things that matter, and remove the noise that doesn’t.

Where it truly began

I didn’t find minimalism through books or architects or galleries.

I found it in a small flat on a very grand square, learning how to live with intention because the walls didn’t allow anything else.

Minimalism didn’t arrive as an aesthetic. It revealed itself as a way of seeing, and later, a way of living. And sometimes, that’s all design is: a series of quiet lessons from the places that shape us long before we realise we were learning anything at all.

Thanks for reading,

Don

From fabric to form

Among them, Ann Demeulemeester has been the most seamless in extending her aesthetic into the domestic sphere. Her partnership with Belgian design company Serax has evolved into one of Europe’s most compelling homeware ranges: matte black and milky white porcelain tableware, poetic glassware with subtle imperfections, and furniture that embodies the quiet drama of her clothing. Velvet sofas in chiaroscuro tones, low lounge chairs with sculptural frames, and wooden consoles stripped of ornamentation—all speak to the same restrained romanticism that defined her fashion. Demeulemeester’s world, once confined to the silhouette of the body, now expands across the room.

Raf Simons, though a generation younger, belongs to the same lineage of Belgian thought—where design is not a discipline but a dialogue. His ongoing collaboration with Kvadrat translates his architectural minimalism into textiles: dense wools, industrial cottons, and colourways that evoke mood rather than trend. Like Demeulemeester, Simons approaches fabric as language—his work for interiors communicates calm modernity without losing its emotional charge.

A humanist thread

The recent passing of Marina Yee has cast a reflective light over this legacy. As the Modemuseum Antwerpen (MoMu) announced:

“Her artistic sensibility transcended the boundaries of fashion: she designed costumes for theatre productions, created paintings, collages, object and interior designs, and graphic works. Her body of work, imbued with a profound humanist awareness, continues to inspire generations of designers.”

Yee was perhaps the most elusive of the six—her career defined less by commercial rhythm and more by philosophical depth. She resisted the fashion cycle long before sustainability became a mainstream concern. Her label Marie, and later her quiet return with M.Y. Collection, were guided by upcycling, emotional durability, and respect for the imperfect.

Galerist Sofie Van de Velde, who had been working with Yee on a final exhibition of assemblages and sculptural objects opening in March, described her approach as the same Belgian poetry of imperfection that runs through the entire Antwerp story.

Exhibition and the enduring influence

In 2026, MoMu will stage a major retrospective marking forty years since the Antwerp Six’s breakthrough. The exhibition—planned long before Yee’s passing—will bring together their individual trajectories for the first time under one roof. What began as a fashion narrative has now become a wider study in design culture: how a small northern European city produced a generation of thinkers who moved effortlessly between disciplines, uniting clothing, object, and interior with the same sense of touch and thought.

Yet the story of Belgian design did not end with the Six—it evolved. Today, the country’s creative influence has quietly expanded from fashion to the built environment, from garments to gestures. Architects like Vincent Van Duysen have redefined Belgian minimalism for a global audience, merging monastic restraint with sensual tactility. His interiors for Molteni&C and Zara Home reflect the same balance of austerity and warmth that once defined Demeulemeester’s tailoring—spaces where silence and shadow become materials in themselves. Van Duysen’s approach, rooted in proportion and texture rather than excess, has become emblematic of what “Belgian design” means today: discreet, soulful, and deeply human.

In fashion, the lineage continues through Matthieu Blazy, creative director at Bottega Veneta and newly appointed to lead Chanel’s ateliers for ready-to-wear. A graduate of the same quiet rigor that shaped Simons and Van Noten, Blazy’s work extends that Belgian ethos of craft and intelligence into the highest echelons of luxury. His collections are defined by deceptive simplicity—jeans woven from leather, coats constructed with architectural precision—an echo of Belgium’s constant dialogue between intellect and emotion, between the hand and the idea.

Together, these figures have repositioned Belgium not just as a birthplace of avant-garde fashion, but as a philosophy of design itself: one that values material honesty, emotional subtlety, and cultural continuity over spectacle. Whether in a Raf Simons textile, a Van Duysen living room, or a Blazy silhouette, the same principles endure—a belief that beauty resides in restraint, and that the everyday can be quietly transcendent.

A simple, low cabinet, black lacquered in matt, no doors, no decoration, just the steady geometry of a box subdivided by a shelf.

At first glance it looks almost severe. The kind of piece that could vanish against a wall if you didn’t pay attention. Yet the longer I looked, the more its restraint began to speak.

No hinges, no brass handles, no expressive joinery or veneer pattern to seduce the eye — only proportion, surface, and shadow. The shelves appear fixed, their rhythm unchanging, like measured beats in hypnotic dance music. The whole thing sits low, closer to a bench than a towering cabinet. It feels self-contained, complete in its modesty.

This is what fascinates me: when an object is reduced to its essentials, what remains is not absence, but conviction.

Functionalism and the courage to do less

Functionalism emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century as both aesthetic and ethic. It rejected ornament as deceit and sought beauty in purpose. Form follows function — the old modernist creed — was not about poverty of imagination, but about honesty: a belief that utility and elegance could be the same thing if one looked closely enough.

The 1930s were its testing ground. After the exuberance of Art Deco, with its lacquered surfaces, exotic veneers and geometries—the functionalist impulse seemed almost radical in its refusal of spectacle. Designers at the Bauhaus, Alvar Aalto in Finland, and the Swedes under the banner of Funkis after the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition all pursued the same idea: to strip away artifice until only intention remained.

That decade sits between two worlds. On one side, the optimism of the machine age; on the other, the approaching austerity of war. Furniture became quieter, more rational. Woods were plain, finishes matte, forms geometric but softened by human proportion. Even in its sparseness, good functionalist furniture retained a warmth that pure industrial design sometimes lacked — a Scandinavian trait of empathy expressed through proportion and touch.

Reading the Bukowskis bookcase

Seen through that lens, this little bookcase becomes more than a storage unit.

Its lack of ornament is not indifference but a discipline, a statement that beauty need not announce itself. The dark lacquer masks grain and texture, forcing attention onto silhouette and negative space. The scale is domestic, almost humble.

There is only one adjustable shelf, and even that minimal flexibility feels like a concession to practicality rather than design flourish. The rest is fixed, certain, resolved.

In a way, this piece is the purest kind of functionalism: it contains nothing it does not need. The function is to hold, and it holds. Nothing more.

The black surface also performs a quiet trick. By muting material expression, it allows light itself to define the form. It’s an architecture in miniature — a meditation in scale and restraint.

From Deco to Mid-Century: the long arc of simplification

To trace the lineage forward, one sees a slow tempering of confidence.

Art Deco celebrated geometry as ornament; functionalism erased the ornament and kept the geometry. Then came mid-century modernism, which reintroduced sensuality — curves, warmth, human comfort — without surrendering clarity.

Designers like Aalto, Wegner, and Eames found poetry in proportion rather than pattern. They softened the severity of early modernism, proving that function and feeling could coexist. Where functionalism was moral, mid-century modernism was emotional. Yet both shared the same DNA: the belief that clarity was the truest form of beauty.

The bookcase sits right on that hinge point — a moment when decoration was no longer trusted, but warmth had not yet fully returned. It’s design in a state of reduction, before the curve softened the line.

Lessons in quietness

Looking at it now, I think about what this kind of object teaches — not just about furniture, but about perception.

1. Restraint is an act of generosity.

By withholding flourish, it allows the user to bring meaning. It doesn’t dictate style; it accommodates life.

2. Proportion outlives pattern.

Fashion dates, but balance does not. The same ratios that felt right in 1935 still feel right now.

3. Utility can be poetic.

To serve a purpose well — to hold, to support, to open — can be its own form of grace. Just look at Donald Judd and Pierre Jeanneret.

4. Silence is a form of presence.

In a world of noise, an unassuming object can become a point of calm. It doesn’t compete; it steadies the room.

The measure of the eye

Functionalist design asks us to look differently. It rewards duration, not spectacle. The more you live with such objects, the more you perceive the care in their restraint — the millimetric decisions of proportion, the way a shelf aligns with a side, the subtle radius of a corner.

That’s what I love about this bookcase. It isn’t loud, collectible for rarity’s sake, or nostalgic for an era. It’s simply, quietly right. And that kind of rightness, where utility, proportion, and intent fall into balance, is the most enduring form of beauty we have.

Cheers & thanks for reading,

Don

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About The Measured Eye.

The Measured Eye is an ongoing notebook on design, materials, and the art of perception — where we look closely at the things that surround us, and ask what they reveal about proportion, purpose, and beauty.

Fashion month always stirs something in me. Having run my own fashion label and worked on the same (insane) calendar as the shows, I realized back in 2015 that I hadn’t had a single Christmas off — we were always prepping for the men’s shows in early January. So yes, there is excitement and admiration, but also a quiet fatigue. The endless cycle of newness can feel at odds with the idea of style itself. True style, I think, has less to do with acquiring and more to do with attuning — to materials, light, proportion, and the rhythm of our own lives, and not that of a fashion or design calendar.

So instead of a shopping list, here are ten ways to live more stylishly, drawn from what I’ve seen and felt these past weeks, and from years of working with design that endures.

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1. Edit Ruthlessly

Clarity is the foundation of style. Remove what no longer serves you — in your closet, your home, your routine. Make space for what matters.

(A philosophy at the heart of General Goods and Platform D where every piece is chosen to last.)

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2. Invest in the Everyday

A beautiful glass, a slipcover armchair, a wooden stool for life. Style lives in repetition, in small acts done beautifully.

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3. Honour Craft

Behind every enduring object is a maker. Irregularities, the trace of a hand — these are not flaws, but signatures. In a world of uniformity, they remind us to value the human touch. Our selection of wood crafts comes from a mix of carpenters and ateliers, combining both new creations and midcentury pieces. Some are handcrafted from vintage woods such as ash and pine, and so each item carries patina, heritage, and quiet grace.

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4. Light Intentionally

Light shapes how we feel. A sculptural lamp or the warmth of a candle can change a space more than any trend.

(Our lighting edit at General Goods was built on this idea.)

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5. Collect with Curiosity

Style isn’t about matching, it’s about curiosity. Let your home evolve with pieces that move you, not pieces that simply coordinate. The mix is what tells your story. Explore auction houses like Bukowskis for midcentury Scandinavian pieces. Drouot in Paris is great for a rich variety of estate sales and multiple-house offerings. Choose objects and pieces that add depth, personality, and a sense of history to your interiors. But avoid clutter!

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6. Choose Texture Over Trend

Linen, wood, glass, stone, sheepskin, materials with depth and honesty. Texture grounds us when novelty begins to feel hollow.

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7. Dress Like You Decorate

Think in lines and volumes. A crisp white shirt, a smooth ceramic, the same restraint applies. Design is design — only the scale shifts.
A perfect example are The Row’s mid-century–inflected stores, where minimalist tailoring sits harmoniously among curated pieces by Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier, and Jean Royère. Their clothes and interiors share the same language — functional, purposeful, and quietly elegant.

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8. Use Scent as Design

Scent has memory. A room scented with smoky tobacco or fig can feel more personal than a wall of artifice. We are in the process of developing our own scent story, but my all time favourite is the iconic Brown Scented Candle from Hotel Costes.

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9. Pause for Beauty

The most stylish people I know notice things, the sound of fabric on tile, the shadow of a branch on the wall. Attention is the first layer of taste.

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10. Live with Intention

Less, but better. Always.

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Style isn’t a performance, it’s a practice. The quiet refinement of choosing deliberately, living attentively, and surrounding ourselves with things that last.

Until next time,

Don

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The Rise of “Quiet” Fashion

Across the fashion landscape, designers like The Row, Phoebe Philo and, at a more accessible level, Uniqlo are all offering collections that resist overt logos and shouty branding. These are pieces that don’t scream “fashion” but remain deeply desirable: thoughtful cuts, impeccable fabrics, and a palette that leans on neutrals and, this season, brown as the new black.

The Row even extends this aesthetic to its own stores, which are furnished with museum-worthy mid-century design — think Pierre Jeanneret chairs, Jean Prouvé tables and Charlotte Perriand stools — creating an environment of understated luxury. This cross-pollination between fashion and interiors is helping normalise high-end furniture as part of the “wardrobe” of the home, especially for shoppers attuned to design.

Case Study: Zara Home × Vincent Van Duysen

One of the clearest expressions of this shift is Zara Home’s collaboration with Vincent Van Duysen. Known for his warm minimalism, Van Duysen has distilled his aesthetic into a collection of furniture and homeware that combines accessible price points with familiar minimalist tropes, clean-lined oak, muted neutrals and earthy browns, tactile linen, and leather detailing.

Significantly, Van Duysen’s slipcover sofas for Zara Home are produced by Blasco, a Spanish atelier celebrated for its exquisitely tailored linen sofas and chairs. Their craftsmanship ensures a relaxed yet refined look that reflects Van Duysen’s ethos of understated elegance. (We also stock Blasco’s furniture pieces, which you can explore below.)

Why This Matters for Interiors

As fashion moves away from overt signals of wealth and status, interiors are following suit. Consumers may be spending more cautiously, but they’re channelling funds into long-term, calming investments — a Pierre Jeanneret chair, a Jean Prouvé desk, a linen sofa from a respected atelier — rather than trend-led décor. The new aspirational home looks more like a sanctuary than a showroom, grounded in warmth, quality and a palette of tactile neutrals.

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🛋️ Shop the Look

Bring the mood of “quiet” luxury into your own home:

*Blasco Linen Slipcover Sofas & Chairs – the same atelier producing Vincent Van Duysen’s sofas for Zara Home. Explore Blasco here →

Pierre Jeanneret Chairs – authentic mid-century Chandigarh designs, as seen in The Row’s stores. Shop midcentury Jeanneret here →

Each piece in our curated selection is chosen for its enduring quality and timeless aesthetic — an investment in calm, lasting style.

When I moved to London in 1997, aged 24, to study audio engineering, I took a weekend job at Armani’s flagship store in Knightsbridge. It was a front-row seat to one of fashion’s great houses at its peak. The store could take in £100,000 on a good day, and it wasn’t just selling clothes—it was selling a philosophy of beauty, craft, and restraint.

Armani’s approach to fashion was, in many ways, my first introduction to minimalism. He taught me about clean lines, utility, and the quiet drama of form stripped of excess. Working in that store, I learned that a folded stack of sweaters should never number more than six, and no more than three identical garments should hang in a row. Too many, and the eye gets cluttered. Too many, and the gesture loses its clarity. These weren’t just rules of retail; they were lessons in composition, in balance, in seeing.

Armani’s Minimalism

Armani’s influence extended beyond fashion, of course. His Armani Casa line, launched in 2000, brought the same pared-back philosophy into interiors. The collections drew inspiration from Balinese woodwork and Chinese glassblowing, combining Eastern craftsmanship with Western restraint. It was among the first homeware ranges to frame interiors not as sets of possessions but as curated spaces for living.

Minimalism, at its core, is not about emptiness but intention. Armani understood this instinctively. A navy T-shirt and wool trousers, cut perfectly, could be more expressive than a wardrobe full of decoration. In interiors, a single piece of oak furniture, left unadorned, can do more for a room than layers of ornamentation. His genius was making restraint not just acceptable, but aspirational.

Enduring Style

Armani will be remembered for many things: as the wealthiest Italian designer, as the man who redefined social norms in dress, as the creator of the deconstructed suit immortalised by Richard Gere in American Gigolo. But for me, his impact was quieter.

I remember the day he came into the Knightsbridge boutique. I was manning the denim section when he shook my hand. It was a small gesture, but it carried the weight of someone who had built an empire on precision and discipline. He showed us that even the smallest details—the fold of a T-shirt, the width of a trouser hem, the lighting in a store—were worth caring about.

There was humanity too. On the day Princess Diana died in August 1997, Armani was the first luxury house in Knightsbridge to close its boutique. The windows filled with flowers and photographs, a gesture of respect that went beyond commerce. It’s easy to forget now, but those small acts defined the culture of the brand as much as the tailoring.

A Personal Legacy

Through Armani, I found not only an education in aesthetics but also a network of friendships that have lasted decades. Many who worked there remain close, bound by the discipline and camaraderie of that era.

So while the tributes will rightfully dwell on Armani’s fortune, his global reach, and his impact on fashion history, I’ll remember him as the man who taught me to see: to value restraint over excess, to appreciate craftsmanship, and to understand that beauty lies not in what you add, but in what you leave out.

RIP Mr Armani.

Respectfully yours,

Don

Here’s how I approach it.

When to Go

• First Day: Best for securing unique pieces before they disappear.

• Last Day: Your chance to negotiate. Many exhibitors prefer selling rather than shipping back home.

• Pricing: Always B2B-friendly. It’s less about discounts and more about timing.

What to Skip

• Giftware Hall: Overloaded with trinkets.

• Cooking: Unless pans excite you. Instead head to Serax for beautifully designed tableware.

• Home Fragrance: I do like this section, but there is endless repetition. Waks from Greece is a niche candle and fragrance company worth visiting if you are interested in bespoke candles and packaging.

First Stops

• Heerenhuis (Belgium): I usually enter in Hall 5 or 6, so my first port of call are these handmade tables from Antwerp. Their ebonised poplar range—benches, side tables—has become a staple in my studio and home.

• The Press Lounge: I stop here for Mariages Frères tea, exhibition catalogues and whenever I need a break. In case you can’t access the lounge, there is also a small food court opposite that is usually a little less busy compared to the main halls.

Lighting to Watch

• Mitgard (Germany): Midcentury-inspired lamps from the makers of the first modular table lamp that still feels timeless.

• Wever & Ducré: Minimalist, functional indoor lighting from Belgium.

• Ay Illuminate (Netherlands): Artisanal fixtures in natural materials; perfect for a house in Ibiza.

  

• Miyuca (Italy): Unique, sustainable designs made entirely from natural waste.

Rugs & Textiles

One of the strongest areas of M&O.

• Etnik Dokuma (Turkey): Handwoven rugs, rich textures.

• Chuk Palu: Extraordinary large-scale wool rug pieces. Recommended for custom design too.

• Valentina Hoyos (Argentina): Textiles and bedding in natural palettes and high quality wools.

• Natures Collection (Denmark): Cowhides and luxurious sheepskins.

• Buenos Norte (Argentina): Woven wool rugs and textiles worth noting.

Ceramics & Objects

• Tell Me More (Sweden): Affordable, distinctive pots and Scandinavian pieces with a wabi sabi touch.

• When Objects Work (Belgium): Collaborations with architects like Vincent Van Duysen, Nicolas Schuybroek, John Pawson. (Van Duysen’s stackable wood-and-stone ceramics started here.)

• Raw Materials (Netherlands): B2B and retail. Unique ceramics and furniture from India and Asia. Their Naga tables are fantastic.

• Pagoda (Belgium): Mix of decorative pieces and vintage-wood furniture like consoles, cabinets and coffee tables.

• Fernando Arte Africano (Madrid): Vintage African tables, planters, and tree-trunk vessels.

Random Discoveries

• Tonucci: Elegant leather pieces.

• JD Productions:Unique Pierre Jeanneret pieces and other craft, like stone vessels, vintage hollow palm tree planters, large columns and heritage pieces. If I have cash to spend it would be here.

• Oyumi: Cashmere plaits I’ve owned for years—superb quality.

• Y.S.M. Products (Japan): Metallic lamps with a sculptural feel.

• Gooooo: Belgium-crafted stoneware pots for outdoor spaces.

• Atmosphere D’Ailleurs: Patina-rich wabi-sabi pieces, from 100-year-old wood tables to ceramics.

• Lobmeyr: For exquisite glassware from one of the oldest Viennese glassmakers.

Best Halls

• Craft

• Décor & Design

• Beauty & Wellness (if you have time)

• Skip the rest.

📝 Pro Tips for Maison & Objet

• Wear trainers: You’ll cover miles of concrete floors.

• Bring a backpack: Ideal for stashing business cards, brochures, and fabric swatches.

• Lunch hack: Skip overpriced stands and head to Joe Segaye—not only for furniture, but also one of the better food options.

• Hall strategy: Start in Halls 8 and 7, then work your way down through 6 and 5. It keeps the flow logical and less exhausting.

• When photographing pieces you like, always snap the stand number or exhibitor sign as well. It saves you from scrolling back later wondering where you saw that perfect table or lamp.

👉 With a little planning and some strategic skipping, Maison & Objet is less about getting lost in the sprawl and more about honing in on discoveries that matter. If you’re pressed for time, you can do it in under 6 hours.

I’ll report on the upcoming September fair in two weeks, after I’m back from Paris and the vintage markets, including my best finds and inspiration for the season ahead.

Yours,

Don

Why Origin Matters

For collectors of midcentury furniture, provenance and authenticity are non-negotiable. A Hans Wegner chair “made in Denmark” carries an entirely different weight than the same form mass-produced elsewhere. Just as in art, the difference between an original and a reproduction lies in its context: who made it, where it was made, and under what conditions.

This extends beyond the vintage market. In contemporary furniture and interiors, knowing the origin remains crucial. It helps buyers understand not just the level of craftsmanship but also the ethical, environmental, and economic conditions under which the object was created.

Unlike the fashion industry, which has come under increasing scrutiny for fast fashion and supply chain transparency, the interiors sector has largely escaped equivalent regulation. Fashion now faces laws such as the EU’s forthcoming Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)*, which requires companies to trace and disclose supply chains. Furniture, however, still operates in a looser framework, leaving many brands free to obscure their true manufacturing processes.

The Transparency Gap in Interiors

Most consumers understand that Ikea or Zara Home products aren’t made in Italy, France, or Denmark. They’re produced in countries with lower wages and cheaper materials, most often in Asia or Eastern Europe. And that’s not inherently wrong. Affordable production democratises access to design.

But transparency should still be a baseline. If your chair is made in Indonesia, it should be clear that it’s made in Indonesia. If your dining table comes from a Belgian workshop, the customer deserves to know. Not every item has to be expensive, but every item should be honest.

Our Own Approach

At General Goods and Platform D, we’ve always sourced from a wide spectrum of suppliers. That spectrum reflects not only price points but also origins and traditions of craft:

Midcentury originals: purchased at auction or from collectors, labeled and authenticated.

Contemporary craftsmanship: For example, our Nakashima-inspired pieces, are handcrafted in India by skilled carpenters.

Local workshops and carpenters: dining tables built in Antwerp, Belgium.

Natural materials: sheepskin furniture and accessories from Denmark.

Know-how: New Jeanneret Editions made in Chandigarh, India, by a Sikh craftsman who apprenticed with Pierre Jeanneret himself.

We always disclose origin and production year because that is part of the story, and part of the value.

The Risk of Obscurity

Problems arise when brands market “craftsmanship” or “heritage” without revealing where production really happens. A sleek brochure promising “Italian style” may mask a factory line in Vietnam, where low-grade woods are used, joints are machine-cut, and durability is secondary to profit margins.

There is nothing inherently wrong with *Made in China* or *Made in Indonesia*. In fact, both countries have traditions of extraordinary craftsmanship. Antique Chinese joinery, for example, is among the most refined woodworking traditions in history. But newer mass-market production from the same regions often prioritises cost over longevity. The result is furniture that may look striking when new, but ages poorly compared to authentic or well-made counterparts.

A Matter of Value

As in most things, paying less may mean you’re buying something temporary, functional for a few years but not destined to become an heirloom. Paying more may reflect not just the object itself, but the chain of hands, tools, and traditions that brought it into being.

Origin anchors design in reality. It ties an object to geography, culture, and craft. And for buyers, whether of a midcentury masterpiece or a new dining table, that knowledge allows for an informed choice.

Because in the end, transparency is not about making every piece expensive. It is about respect: for the craft, the maker, and the buyer.

Yours,

Don

1. Axel Vervoordt

The Belgian master of restraint and atmosphere. Vervoordt taught us that emptiness can be as powerful as presence. His homes hum with silence, proving that patina and imperfection can be the greatest luxuries. In a world that rushes toward novelty, he slows us down, reminding us that a weathered surface can tell more stories than anything new.

2. Vincent Van Duysen

Van Duysen’s work whispers rather than shouts. His interiors are monastic but never cold, human-scaled yet deeply architectural. He gave us a language for spaces that soothe rather than stimulate. Where Vervoordt celebrates imperfection, Van Duysen balances it with precision, two sides of a similar pursuit: serenity.

3. John Pawson

Minimalism is not absence but clarity. Pawson’s work shows us how the simplest lines, the most honest materials, can distill a room to its essence. To live with Pawson’s eye is to live pared down to the essential, and to find peace there. He and Van Duysen share a kinship in simplicity, but Pawson’s minimalism leans more toward the monastic and elemental, architecture as a vessel for contemplation.

4. Joe D’Urso

The American pioneer of high-tech minimalism, D’Urso redefined loft living in the 1970s. His clean planes and modular approaches were radical then, but they remain blueprint to how so many of us inhabit open space today. Where Pawson edited spaces to their essence, D’Urso expanded them into stages of possibility, shifting the conversation from containment to openness.

5. Lorraine Letendre

Often unsung, Letendre introduced an artistry to textiles and surfaces that softened the austerity of modernism. Her work reminded us that homes are not just to be seen, but to be touched. In dialogue with D’Urso’s hardness or Pawson’s clarity, Letendre offered tactility, an essential counterpoint.

6. Charlotte Perriand

Perriand gave modernism its human pulse. Working alongside Le Corbusier but carving her own path, she married function and warmth. Her alpine interiors, in particular, taught us that modern could also mean deeply rooted in place. She showed that modernism could live in both the city and the mountains.

7. Florence Knoll

We often think of corporate interiors when we hear her name, but Knoll’s vision carried through to our homes too. She believed design should serve life, not the other way around. Her rigour, her clarity, continues to shape how we sit, work, and gather. She systematised modernism, while Perriand humanised it, a fascinating balance in how modern design entered domestic life.

8. Isamu Noguchi

Sculptor, designer, poet of form. Noguchi dissolved the boundaries between art and furniture. His Akari lamps float like paper moons in living rooms across the world, a reminder that light itself is a material of design. Noguchi’s work was deeply personal and poetic, proof that homes can hold sculpture as comfortably as sofas.

9. Eero Saarinen

His tulip chair remains a feat of grace, an attempt to banish “the slum of legs” under tables. Saarinen’s designs lifted furniture into fluid gestures, reshaping the domestic landscape into something both futuristic and familiar. If Noguchi gave us poetry, Saarinen gave us optimism, the belief that design could streamline life without stripping away its joy.

10. Arne Jacobsen

From the Egg chair to his cutlery, Jacobsen approached the home as a total environment. His modernism was playful, sculptural, and enduring. Few designers have managed to marry utility and poetry so seamlessly. Together with Saarinen, he made the case that design could be joyful and forward-looking, even as it shaped our most everyday rituals.

11. Vincenzo De Cotiis

Raw, futuristic, often brutal, De Cotiis makes rooms feel like fragments of another planet. He pushes us to see the home as a place for experiment, for narrative, for art at scale. If Vervoordt asks us to look backward, into time and patina, De Cotiis offers a fertile dialogue between the old and the new, a cornerstone of his work. History breaks free into spaces where the line between past and future blends.

12. Claudio Silvestrin

If Zen had an architect, it might be Silvestrin. His interiors are almost ascetic in their purity, yet they generate extraordinary calm. He shows us that restraint, practiced with devotion, is a gift. Where De Cotiis is raw and forceful, Silvestrin is quiet and eternal, the yin to his yang.

When I look across this list, what strikes me is not sameness but a shared conviction: the home is not static. It is a canvas, a vessel, a mirror. These designers invite us to see our rooms differently, to strip them back, to layer them with tactility, to light them as sculpture, to live inside their questions.

Their approaches often diverge, Knoll’s systems against Noguchi’s poetry, Vervoordt’s silence against De Cotiis’s drama, but together they map the spectrum of possibility within our walls. And perhaps that’s the real lesson: our homes are not just made of walls and furniture. They’re made of ideas, too.

Until next week, keep looking closely.

Yours,

Don

Founder, General Goods & Platform D

But my awakening to design didn’t come through fashion, it arrived by surprise.

It was Pierre Jeanneret’s furniture for the Chandigarh project in India that shifted my perspective completely. Until then, I hadn’t understood that design could be at once minimalist, functional, and democratic. Seeing those clean, honest forms, chairs, tables, and desks built from teak and cane, was like learning a new visual language.

The first piece I encountered in person was an office chair and desk, shown by a French dealer at Maison & Objet in Paris. At the time, originals were far beyond my reach. I chose well-made reproductions instead, not out of compromise but conviction: design should be lived with, not locked away. That belief has guided me ever since.

Even now, though I can afford originals, I remain committed to a mix—vintage beside contemporary, authentic icons beside thoughtful reproductions. In my stores, you’ll always find that philosophy made tangible. For me, good design should be accessible to everyone.

Chandigarh, Then and Now

Jeanneret’s Chandigarh furniture was never meant for luxury showrooms or auction houses. It was created for the city’s administrative buildings - libraries, courts, offices - where the public encountered it daily. V-leg and X-leg chairs, sturdy teak tables with woven cane seats: these were the tools of civic and student life, not status symbols.

How ironic, then, that a library table once intended for communal study now sells for over $100,000 at auction. Surely Jeanneret would balk at such exclusivity. And yet—I understand the draw. To own an original is to hold a fragment of design history, complete with the patina of decades of use. It is not just furniture but a vessel of memory.

The Humble Truth of Materials

What still resonates most deeply with me are the materials: stone, wood, cane, wool, metal. Humble, honest, elemental. They are the foundations of design that endures, the raw ingredients that invite touch and reveal age beautifully.

This is the essence of what I strive for at The Measured Eye and in our collections at General Goods: to highlight design that is pared back yet soulful, minimal yet warm.

As architect Vincent Van Duysen puts it: “Curate as a minimalist with a soul.” That is the lens I try to bring to every choice, whether arranging a room, selecting a chair, or sourcing a centuries-old object.

Trust Your Eye

Design doesn’t need to be overcomplicated. Your instincts matter more than trends. If you are drawn to something, whether it’s a $10 flea market find or a Jeanneret chair with a six-figure price tag, trust that pull. Your eye knows what resonates with your life, your values, your space.

That is what The Measured Eye is about: learning to see, slowly and carefully, until beauty becomes second nature.

Yours,

Don

“If this resonates, subscribe to The Measured Eye to join a community of people exploring design, objects, and the art of living intentionally. Each week, I’ll share essays, stories, and curated objects that reflect this philosophy.”

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Dear Reader,

Donald Judd apparently abhorred being called a minimalist. And I get it. His taste leaned toward the expansive, the precise, the purposeful, but never showy. Yet his designs often stripped away the superfluous, favouring clarity, function, and form. That tension between perception and reality is, I think, at the heart of what minimalism really is, and why it deserves more nuance than the term is often given.

Minimalism shouldn’t be an eye-rolling reaction when someone describes interiors or objects. It’s not simply about a few objects in an empty space, or a room that feels “staged” for Instagram. A sofa without a side table might look clean, but it fails in function, and that’s not minimalism, it’s impracticality. True minimalism is more subtle: a balance of restraint, utility, and beauty. Less isn’t less—it’s considered. It’s editing, refining, and giving every object a reason to exist.

Good design, in this sense, is defined by attention to form, function, and aesthetics equally. Think of Judd’s chairs and desks: stark yet purposeful. Dieter Rams’ shelves and audio equipment: simplicity that hides incredible thought. Pierre Jeanneret’s expansive furniture for Chandigarh’s administrative buildings: elegant, functional, and human-scaled. These works demonstrate that minimalism isn’t about removing character or warmth; it’s about amplifying what truly matters.

And yet, in our world, the landscape of design can be overwhelming. On one end are cheap, disposable solutions, you know, the “assemble-it-yourself” furniture from mass retailers. On the other, rare mid-century or modernist icons at auction that are almost inaccessible. In between lies a vast grey area of choice, style, and quality, much of it noise. Separating signal from noise is the real challenge for anyone who wants their home to feel intentional rather than cluttered.

Interestingly, brands like Zara Home have found a way to make minimalism approachable. Collaborating with designers such as Vincent Van Duysen, they offer ranges that feel inspired by classic design and luxury aesthetics but remain accessible. They demonstrate that pared-back design doesn’t have to be elitist or unattainable—it’s about curating thoughtful, functional, and beautiful pieces for everyday life.

Minimalism is, at its core, about cutting away unnecessary details, just as we might cut through the noise we scroll past online or see in our homes. It’s about finding objects that are both purposeful and beautiful. The perfect chair, table, or lamp doesn’t just look good; it earns its place in the home through utility and proportion, just as Judd’s works did.

I remember a small, personal lesson in this. My mother, doing laundry one day, had put the clean clothes in a lilac-coloured plastic hamper. I huffed in dismay. Why lilac? Why plastic? Why anything that shouted for attention when there were more neutral, timeless options available? At the time, I was frustrated by the colour and material, but in retrospect, it illuminated a larger point: our environment is full of choices that are loud, cheap, or poorly considered.

This is where considered design comes in. As consumers, we have to learn to see beyond the first bright object that catches our eye. The lilac hamper may grab attention, but a well-designed, timeless object—whether it’s a laundry basket, a lamp, or a sofa—will blend purpose with beauty, and enrich our daily lives without screaming for notice. Minimalism isn’t about starkness; it’s about thoughtfulness, intention, and quiet excellence.

In the end, minimalism isn’t a style to follow or a label to wear. It’s a mindset: the search for the perfect marriage of function and beauty, the removal of the unnecessary, and the celebration of what truly belongs. It’s less about having nothing and more about having the “right” things, crafted, considered, and quietly indispensable.

Yours,

Don

Founder, General Goods and Platform D