This year marked the 20th year of Design Miami, the function-forward collectible fair situated across the street from the Art Basel. Since the fair, founded by Craig Robins, first appeared in the Moore Building in the still-developing Design District, much has changed. The small, experimental event has expanded to some 80 exhibitors. The Design District has morphed from a wasteland into a luxury brand mecca. And, since 2023, when the fair was acquired by online streetwear purveyor Basic.Space, it has grown to include a fleet of new locations and activations in Paris, Seoul, New York, Los Angeles, and—according to last week’s announcement—now Dubai.
Despite the 20th anniversary hooplah, this year’s fair felt different. Not least because several of its mainstays and founding members (Galerie Kreo, Laffanour, Patrick Seguin, even perennial favorites like Converso) were conspicuously absent. Word on the street was that this had as much to do with shipping and handling difficulties as with the preponderance of art and design fairs popping up across the globe. Still, it gave a handful of new exhibitors–many of them American–a chance in the spotlight, adding local flavor to the fair.
Of course, Design Miami is just one element in a big week of happenings, which includes art fairs, showroom events, beachside art installs and events galore. But for design people, Design Miami is usually the first stop. As always, we came, we saw, and we have notes. Read on for our trend spotting and takeaways.
Big, Cuddly Creatures
This year, artists and designers seemed to take a cue from François-Xavier Lalanne, showing oversized creatures as friendly and huggable as the midcentury artist's iconic fuzzy moutons. I spent an afternoon with American artist Katie Stout, winner of this year's Design Miami Curatorial Lab commission, who created a series of whimsical benches in the shape of a whale, frog, dog, turtle, horse, and a mermaid, among other creatures for the city's Design District. "I wanted them to feel like they had been sculpted by a giant's thumb," Stout told us of the series, titled Gargantua's Thumb. When a toddler climbed on the whale, wrapping his sticky melted-ice-cream hands around the piece, she looked only delighted. She also created what was arguably Design Miami’s main attraction: a fully functional carousel where visitors could sit astride a bulbous walrus, seagull, or mermaid. (Stout likes mermaids.) It was genius selfie material, and I only regret not climbing aboard for a spin.
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Elsewhere at the fair, Ukrainian designer Victoria Yakusha showed four mythical animals—similarly rounded and friendly to the touch—hand-sculpted in ZTISTA, her signature material made of clay, flax, wood chips, and recycled paper. "Sit on it, please!" she encouraged guests. "The point is to bring joy. It's a reminder that light persists even when the world trembles," she said, herself dressed in a white balloon-like garment that made her resemble one of her own hugimals.
But when it came to the most cuddly (and gargantuan) creation of the week, the winner had to be the yeti-like "monster lamp" by Mexican designer Fernando Laposse at Friedman Benda. The friendly long-haired Patachon (2025), enrobed in fluffy agave fibers that beg to be stroked, stands over six feet tall, its rounded hands lit up like E.T., one arm raised in a salute. Greetings, earthlings.—C.H.
Stranger Things
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Like a lot of people, I plunged back into the Duffer Brothers' universe over Thanksgiving weekend. (Winona Forever, I say.) Maybe that's why the uncanny doings in Hawkins, Indiana were on my mind. Dubai-based designer Roham Shamekh presented a sofa that looked straight out of the Upside Down, crawling with disturbing root-like tendrils. Constructed of ceramic and resin, it clearly wasn't intended for flopping on for a cozy snooze. At the booth, visitors were offered headphones to listen to a layered soundscape designed "to guide the soul back to its roots," while experiencing the furniture. (In another echo of the Netflix behemoth, this felt like an offering for Max, her headphones blaring Kate Bush to fight off the demon.) Then there was a rather post-apocalyptic collection from Stockholm designers Ash and Johan Wilén-Jong featuring an armchair and side table of charred wood and cast recycled glass—the solid maple burned straight through as if by Vecna himself. The designers describe the armchair’s semi-translucent form as "capturing the paralysis of anxiety—light attempting to break through darkness." A metaphor for Stranger Things, or American politics in 2025? You decide.—C.H.
Miami Heat
I like when an art or design week feels a reflection of its environment. If nothing else, it justifies the decision to even take the trip, in an era where everything could perhaps be, just as easily, gleaned from social media or online roundups. This year at the fair, many of my favorites stood out for their unapologetic Miami-ness: hot color palettes, flashy finishes, Streamline Moderne details. “I wanted to capture the happy, joyful optimism I associate with Miami,” Argentinian designer and artist Conie Vallese told me in the butter yellow Fendi booth, where she displayed cast-bronze-and-leather chairs, Venetian glass vessels, tile-clad tables, and carpets blooming with her signature flora made with the 100-year-old Italian luxury brand in palettes plucked from the local Art Deco architecture.
Meanwhile, also at the fair, Kohler showed off a new, shimmering iridescent finish developed by David Franklin and deployed on a school of fish in their installation by Crosby Studios, while Mindy Solomon exhibited works of high craft against an electric sunset gradient that called to mind an airbrushed tee. For the roving dinner series We Are Ona, Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis collaborated with SolidNature on sunset-hued long, modular dining tables (you can buy them via Salon 94) that become activated by the Miami sunlight. One of my favorite debuts of the week was by Miami native Emmett Moore, whose latest outdoor furniture series, Neon Sun, was unveiled at Nina Johnson gallery in Little Haiti. Displayed casually in the courtyard, his mashups of repurposed I-beams and cast-aluminum tree trunks and mussel shells, slicked in hot pink, give off the electric buzz of a neon sign. For me (paging other design heads) they looked like Andrea Branzi’s Domestic Animals took a trip to South Beach. —H.M
Design Miami, we have thoughts
In light of the dozen or so conversations I had last week with design people eager to declare a “lack of criticism in the industry,” I thought, why not take this opportunity to offer some thoughts on what was working and what I would like to see more of—at this fair, or at any of the numerous ones that have taken over the design calendar. In my opinion, the best booths at Design Miami, were the ones that prioritized narrative (perhaps not a surprising opinion coming from a writer). My personal favorite was a curio by the New York gallery Superhouse, which showcased a strange and eye-catching batch of American Art Furniture from the ‘80s and ‘90s, an era that, I would argue, laid the creative groundwork for a lot of what we’re seeing in contemporary collectible design. Most memorable was Alex Locadia’s 1989 Superman chair that beckons you to, let’s just say it, sit on the superhero’s lap. The installation, with era-appropriate scenography by Studio Ahead (think: Greek-revival columns with the funky flair of a napkin drawing), taught me something, showed me work I hadn’t seen before within a historical context, and looked great in my photos.
I wish I could say the same about many of the other booths, which felt more like a random assortment of works carted in from the gallery. I would have loved to see more single-artist booths, like Cristina Grajales’ showcasing the delicate, woven-metal textiles of Hechizoo, whose work she presented at the inaugural fair 20 years back.
Instead, many booths presented what amounted to a beautiful mishmash of disparate items. Yes, a thing of beauty is a joy forever, and I bore witness to covetable objects (I lusted after a pair of rare tables by Henri Bataille at Magen H, a kooky Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired lamp by Autumn Casey at the Future Perfect, and the sleek Martin Szekely pieces at Galerie signé). But I would love more cohesive storytelling, better set design, and a sense of discovery throughout the entire fair, not just at the standout showstoppers. —HM
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