This month, we turn our creative lens toward one of the world’s most anticipated design gatherings—Milan Design Week 2025.
Our creative lead Ninoshka Cardoz explores the intersection of design, storytelling, and brand experience through the most standout installations at Salone del Mobile – Milano. What we uncovered was a powerful evolution: brands no longer just show up in spaces—they live in them, breathe through them, and connect on a deeper, more human level.
From immersive rituals of scent and silence to cinematic time capsules of past and future, this article unpacks three exceptional experiences that redefined what it means to be a brand in space.
Here’s a sneak peek of what we spotlight:
No. 01 – Lavazza: A Spiritual Journey Through Coffee
A raw and meditative installation that transformed product storytelling into a soulful spatial experience.
No. 02 – Aesop: When Skin Meets Sacred Space
An organic, sensory-led activation that blurred boundaries between ritual, space, and brand identity.
No. 03 – Range Rover: Time Travel in Style
A cinematic dual-era installation that reimagined heritage and future through design, scent, and storytelling.
At Salone del Mobile – Milano, design stretched far beyond aesthetics or form—it became a medium for emotional and spatial storytelling. Across the city, brands moved beyond the expected, crafting environments that engaged the senses and stirred the imagination. This month’s #InFocus highlights three standout experiences where brand narratives came to life through space, transforming environments into layered, living expressions. These experiences moved beyond static installations, becoming immersive worlds attuned to their surroundings—shaping atmosphere and memory alike.
Lavazza: A Spiritual Journey Through Coffee
Marking 130 years of rich coffee heritage, Lavazza presented The Source of Pleasure, a site-specific installation by Brazilian architect Juliana L. Vasconcellos. Hidden in a lush, water-lined sanctuary, guests discovered a monolithic structure echoing the shape of Lavazza’s new coffee ‘tab’—a subtle nod to the brand’s evolution.
Inside, visitors were taken on a raw, contemplative journey through coffee’s essence. Nature, aroma, and ritual converged in a deeply meditative space that invited introspection and sensory connection. The experience was a soulful exploration of legacy and emotion, showing how brand storytelling can become a transcendent experience.
Aesop: When Skin Meets Sacred Space
Inside Milan’s historic Chiesa del Carmine, Aesop unveiled Second Skin—a multisensory installation that blurred boundaries between body, architecture, and ritual. The brand’s Eleos balm took center stage, with scented, textured walls guiding guests along a contemplative path of scent, sound, and purification.
The experience culminated in a serene courtyard, where a bespoke 50-seat table offered space for rest and reflection. It was a masterclass in subtlety and symbolism where the result was organic, poetic, and emotionally grounded—an ode to how brands can exist within a space so naturally, they feel timeless.
Range Rover: Time Travel in Style
In Futurespective: Connected Worlds, Range Rover reimagined its heritage through the lens of design innovation. Set in Piazza Belgioioso, guests entered through a soaring 25-meter golden monolith and embarked on a journey between two eras: 1970 and 2025. The retro capsule immersed visitors in a world of archival artifacts, soft beam lighting, and the nostalgic scents of leather and aged currency. In contrast, the future experience unfolded within an ethereal prism—clean lines, refracted light, and mirror illusions set the stage for the latest Range Rover Autobiography.
It was a cinematic, tactile evolution from past to present—a reflection of a wider trend at this year’s Design Week: reinterpreting heritage through contemporary design to create emotional impact. Luxury served as the language, but legacy was the message.
Final Thoughts
At Milan Design Week 2025, these brands showed us that the most powerful design resonates beyond aesthetics—it stirs something within. When crafted with intention, it draws people in, communicates through atmosphere, and becomes part of the environment itself. This is where experiential branding is heading: toward storytelling that doesn’t just unfold, but fully inhabits the space around it.
