MINI + Paul Smith in Milan
MINI has teamed with Paul Smith on an installation called 'A Garden of Curiosity' at the historic Palazzo Borromeo d’Adda, open during Salone week (April 21–26) — a clear example of fashion and auto brands staging showhouse-style experiences in Milan. (ansa.it)
Milan’s biggest furniture week now has a car brand and a fashion designer turning a 16th-century palazzo into an installation. MINI and Paul Smith are opening “A Garden of Curiosity” at Palazzo Borromeo d’Adda during Salone del Mobile week, from April 21 to April 26, 2026. (bmwgroup.com) The setting matters because Palazzo Borromeo d’Adda sits on Via Alessandro Manzoni 41, one of Milan’s luxury corridors, and MINI is calling the site the House of MINI for the week. BMW Group says visitors can enter daily from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (bmwgroup.com) This is happening alongside the 64th Salone del Mobile, which runs April 21 to April 26, 2026, at Fiera Milano Rho and remains the anchor event for Milan Design Week. The fair says this year brings back the kitchen and bathroom biennials, which helps explain why brands outside furniture fight for attention across the city. (salonemilano.it) MINI is not treating the project like a static showroom. BMW Group describes it as an immersive installation built around color, sound, and playful details, with Paul Smith’s use of color paired to MINI’s design language. (bmwgroup.com) The collaboration also has history behind it. Paul Smith and MINI previously worked on the one-off MINI STRIP, unveiled in August 2021, a stripped-back electric car built around simplicity, transparency, and sustainability. (bmwgroup.com) That older project was about pulling a car apart to show how it was made. This new one swings the other way: BMW Group says the Milan installation will showcase the latest MINI Paul Smith Edition, turning the partnership from a design experiment into a product launch wrapped in a room-sized experience. (bmwgroup.com) (paulsmith.com) MINI’s United States site says the Paul Smith Edition will be released in limited numbers and offered on the MINI Cooper S 2 Door, Cooper S 4 Door, and Cooper S Convertible. That gives the Milan installation a second job: it is not just an art piece for design week crowds, but a stage set for a retail product. (miniusa.com) Milan has become the place where brands do this on purpose. Fuorisalone’s own coverage says the 2026 week includes more than 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries and treats design as culture, experience, and strategy, which is exactly the lane a carmaker and a fashion label can occupy together. (fuorisalone.it) So the real object on display is bigger than one special-edition car. It is a formula in which a heritage brand borrows Milan’s design audience, a designer borrows a carmaker’s scale, and both meet inside a palazzo that works like a temporary house, gallery, and store at once. (bmwgroup.com) (salonemilano.it)
