LETTERS FROM MILAN

Once a year the city hands itself over to design, and even the private courtyards open their gates. Letters From Milan goes for the fair and stays for everything around it: the manufacturers who supply the world, the techniques that take years to learn, the showrooms that stay open late, and the interiors that will be copied by spring. We also climb the stairs to Achille Castiglioni’s studio on Piazza Castello, kept as he left it, with the prototypes and found objects still on the shelves where he put them. Plus the architecture that makes the city worth walking, and where to eat when the stands close.

Each edition carries the city’s palette, lifted here from Ponti’s tiles and Castiglioni’s shelves; notes on sourcing from the manufacturers who supply the world, lead times included; and a letter to the city at the back.