Brand Shows & New Materials

Milan Design Week is full of polished launches, but three of this year’s most talked-about objects started in very different places: a scrapyard in Piedmont, a chair built from hemp and pineapple leaves, and a champagne installation wrapped in one very specific yellow. (wallpaper.com) (designboom.com) (wallpaper.com) Philippe Malouin’s new Vite moka pot for Alessi looks like a giant screw because Malouin built the idea after studying metal parts in a Piedmont scrapyard and reworking them through what he called a “copy and paste” industrial design process. (wallpaper.com) (us.alessi.com) Alessi is selling Vite in full aluminum and in three colors — brown, grey, and green — and the company says the pot uses an aluminum body with a magnetic steel bottom so it can work on all cooktops, including induction. (wallpaper.com) (us.alessi.com) That rough-source approach sits next to a very different Milan story at Isola Design Festival, where Veronica Olariu is showing Hemp Chair: A Tensile Structure in the “No Space for Waste” program. (designboom.com) (isola.design) Olariu’s chair does not rely on heavy bulk for stability. Designboom says it uses counterbalance and tension, with seat shells made from layered hemp fabric and a core of pineapple-leaf felt, so the structure holds the body through pull and balance instead of mass. (designboom.com) Pineapple-leaf fiber is not a novelty material pulled from nowhere. Materials research has tracked it for years as a composite reinforcement because the leaves are usually discarded after harvest, turning farm residue into a usable structural input. (mdpi.com) (link.springer.com) The third project comes from Veuve Clicquot, which is bringing British-Nigerian artist Yinka Ilori to Milan for “Chasing the Sun,” an installation at Mediateca Santa Teresa in Brera running from April 20 to April 26, 2026. (fuorisalone.it) (wallpaper.com) Wallpaper says the collaboration includes a champagne bucket and cooler, while Veuve Clicquot and Women’s Wear Daily describe a larger limited-edition group of objects tied to Yellow Label and Rosé, all built around the house’s long-running Clicquot Yellow. (wallpaper.com) (veuveclicquot.com) (wwd.com) Veuve Clicquot says that yellow has been on the maison’s labels since 1877, so Ilori is not inventing a new brand color here. He is taking a 149-year-old one and turning it into an immersive Milan backdrop for hospitality, product, and image all at once. (wallpaper.com) (wwd.com) (falstaff.com) Put together, the three launches show a Milan week where brand theater and material research are sharing the same stage: Alessi turns scrapyard logic into a stovetop object, Olariu turns agricultural by-products into load-bearing furniture, and Veuve Clicquot turns a heritage label color into a city-scale installation. (wallpaper.com) (designboom.com) (wallpaper.com)