The Unexpected Stars of the Runways? The Furniture
3 min readIf there was one takeaway from this year’s Milan Design Week, it was that fashion and furniture are no longer fully distinct categories. Brands like Prada, Hermès, Fendi, and Giorgio Armani each presented installations featuring furniture pieces or home objects. And in recent seasons, Bottega Veneta, Ralph Lauren, and Alaïa have all created custom seating for their fashion shows. The movement goes both ways, with brands like Institution and Hodakova creating clothing that could almost double as home décor.
Georgian-Azerbaijani designer Galib Gassanoff, whose brand Institution showed models wrapped in patterned carpets for fall 2026, says his goal is “to tell a story where objects, interior design, and contemporary art can dialogue with fashion and clothing.” He loves the notion that a garment could one day find a new use in the home, aiming “to give this idea of a collectible—clothing that is not staying in a wardrobe after you wear it once or twice. It can live forever on a wall.” Growing up in the Caucasus region, which has a long history of artisanal tapestries and carpets, Gassanoff learned how to make pieces on a loom, following ancestral traditions, and he still works with local craftspeople to create exclusive pieces.
Designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson is known for her boundary-pushing pieces. For her fall 2026 Hodakova collection, shown at Le Carrousel du Louvre, chairs became dresses, the fabric wrapping the body and the chair legs sitting alongside the model’s thighs. Another look paired a rug worn over the shoulders and torso with a top and shorts.
Ralph Lauren’s fall 2026 show seating.
Fashionable furniture made its way off the runway as well—though not far from it. For Ralph Lauren’s fall 2026 show, which was held at New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery, a mix of vintage chairs and furniture from the brand’s home line stood alongside antique carpets. Invitations to Alaïa’s spring 2024 couture show came in a brown leather box. Inside each was a wood and leather folding chair. The chairs served as seating for the show, held on a Paris footbridge, and guests were expected to arrive with them in tow.
Over the years, Bottega Veneta has worked with furniture and design brands to create runway seating, which in some cases then shows up at design shows and becomes available for purchase. For the brand’s fall 2026 show in March, British furniture designer Max Lamb created 421 chairs made from expanded polystyrene, which was hand-cut and assembled for the event. For fall 2024, Bottega Veneta guests sat on special editions of architect Le Corbusier’s famous crate-inspired LC14 Cabanon stool, created with Cassina in collaboration with the Fondation Le Corbusier. The trio later made versions of the stools for a Milan Design Week installation called “On the Rocks”.
A look from Institution fall 2026.
The Italian glass brand 6:AM created blown-glass stools for Bottega Veneta’s spring 2026 runway show. “The cube [stool] already existed as an idea before the collaboration,” says Edoardo Pandolfo, co-founder of the brand. “What changed through the dialogue with Bottega Veneta was its scale and ambition. The fashion show provided an opportunity to realize the project in a way that would not have been possible otherwise, transforming a single object into a collective architectural gesture.”
The designers learned that one of the biggest distinctions between fashion and furniture is the timeline. While most fashion designers adhere to a strict schedule, releasing collections at specific points during the year, furniture and design brands operate more independently. “Fashion operates at a completely different pace. Collections are developed and presented at extraordinary speed, and everything revolves around a fixed date,” Pandolfo says. “Between the compressed timeline, the technical challenges, and the absence of a plan B, this became one of the most demanding projects we have ever worked on.”
Custom seating for Alaïa’s spring 2024 couture show.
Despite the differences, Gassanoff believes all designers share a similar goal: creating beautiful pieces that shape the way we live and feel. He wants to play with the notion that fashion pieces are often seen as disposable—worn for a season or two and then cast off—while furniture can be used for generations. He believes clothing can last, too. “Usually, people think of furniture as an investment,” he says. “I’m trying to make customers think that clothing, if it’s made in a certain way by certain craftsmen, has a kind of value. It’s an investment, as well.”
This story appears in the September 2026 issue of ELLE.
