Inside AD’s Exclusive Milan Design Week Dinner, Hosted With Ralph Lauren

Leading lights of the design world converged at Palazzo Ralph Lauren in Milan last Wednesday during the city’s annual Salone del Mobile furniture fair for dinner in the inner courtyard, hosted by AD global editorial director Amy Astley and David Lauren, Ralph’s chief branding and innovation officer. Some sixty guests—including AD100 designers Robert Stilin, Laura Gonzalez, and Sheila Bridges and AD heads of editorial content from France, Spain, Italy, China, and Germany–gathered at the midcentury Rationalist-style building in the heart of Milan where Ralph Lauren Home’s fall 2025 collections were on display.

Tables in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ralph Lauren are dressed in fabric from the forthcoming Canyon Road collection.

The place settings featured Ethan wine glasses, Wentworth silverware, Kenmore dinner napkins, and Everett dinnerware, from the forthcoming Canyon Road collection.

Virgile Guinard

“When I tell people about Salone del Mobile they think it’s some kind of trade show,” host David Lauren said in his remarks, over Ralph-approved Santa Barbara salads and tuna tartare. “I tell them no, this is a meeting of some of the greatest talents in the world.”

The dinner conversation proved it: discussions turned to opera set designs, Cooper Hewitt accolades, and installations at the Louvre—and of course, plenty of upcoming residential projects. Designers joked that Dimorestudio had become something like the creative directors of Milan after putting their stamp on so many hotels, restaurants, and shops around the city. For some designers like newly minted AD100 Lily Dierkes, it was their first Salone. Others were several decades in. All compared notes on what to see. Was Alcova worth the long journey north to Villa Borsani? What was the vibe like at the hot new Fabrizio Casiraghi–designed members club, The Wilde? Who would be spotted the next morning at Barry’s? There was one thing everyone agreed on: they couldn’t get enough of Ralph’s perfectly crispy matchstick skinny French fries.

Guests dressed to impress, putting their twist on Americana, from full on prep to blue suede fringe, to one very memorable cowboy hat, donned by Belgian bad boy Job Smeets of Studio Job. It all felt in keeping with the lush, orchid-laden tablescapes that showcased a preview of the brand’s new fall 2025 Canyon Road collection, an ode to the American West. Pewter vases and votives designed in collaboration with siblings Naiomi and Tyler Glasses, Ralph Lauren Home’s first artists in residence, were stamped with motifs typically used in Navajo weaving. Meanwhile, the tablecloths, made of Mesa Stripe fabric, referenced a design Tyler Glasses originally realized on a saddle blanket. AD100 architect David Rockwell admired the matte white Everett dinnerware, which resemble nubby linen, also a new product from the Canyon Road collection, launching this fall.

A preview of Ralph Lauren Home’s new Canyon Road collection, which debuts in fall 2025.

By the time a silver tiered platter of miniature cakes had arrived, new friendships had been cemented, business advice traded, collaborations discussed, and New York–based designer Monique Gibson joked that she and Dimorestudio’s Britt Moran, who had only just met, would get married right there in the courtyard. With a chance to sit down during one of the busiest weeks of the year, dinner guests had no doubt heeded one bit of advice from Lauren’s remarks, that they “learn from each other, teach each other, and hear each other.”