Of all the New York design week hot takes, the hottest came from trend forecaster Jaye Mize, who took to Instagram yesterday to proclaim: “NY Design Week >>> Milan Design Week this year (which is now a fashion show).” A bold assessment, and certainly music to the ears of the official festival’s organizers, who have long struggled to shake unflattering comparisons to Salone and all that surrounds it.
But leave Milan aside. New York is a great design city, and it deserves a great design week, judged on its own terms. This year’s edition of NYCxDesign and all its attendant side events delivered a lot to chew on, from the debut of an entirely new show to the proliferation of once outsidery collectives like Jonalddudd, which seemed to pop up everywhere this year. Add to that a flurry of debuts, new showrooms, and a BDDW party with a sharpshooting gallery—it’s been a lot.
Here, the Business of Home team reports key takeaways from the festival.
New Kids on the Block
The new guard of New York’s design community convened over the weekend at the first-ever Shelter trade show, where more than 100 brands and makers across the fields of furniture, art and decor showcased their wares in the spacious Starrett-Lehigh building near Hudson Yards. Aptly titled “Vol. 1: Mart Nouveau,” the inaugural design fair lived up to its moniker—the space’s exhibitor cohort was brimming with recently launched brands, trade show first-timers and even a few ventures making their debut, including playful lighting studio Mr. John’s Goods and Brooklyn-based furniture and decor maker Riffmade. An array of industry stalwarts (Blu Dot, Humanscale and Carl Hansen & Søn, to name a few) cohabitated with avant-garde exhibitors like the aforementioned Jonalddudd, which welcomed visitors with a decidedly unstuffy feature: a hot dog cart hawking branded merchandise.
Elsewhere, attendees could pick up copies of Substack newsletter For Scale’s second-ever print issue, or enjoy a slate of programming and panels on topics like creating sanctuary and the future of design media. All in all, the fair marked a splashy re-entrance into the world of trade shows for founders Deirdre Maloney and Minya Quirk—two industry veterans who co-created Shoppe Object before moving on to establish online design shop Afternoon Light (the operation behind Shelter) in 2022.
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The vibe at the fair was relaxed and upbeat. Shelter was a dog-friendly show, and having pooches in the mix gave proceedings a casual feeling missing from many industry events. Exhibitors who had never participated in a trade show were generally thrilled to be there, and happy that it drew tastemakers and designers. There were complaints from some veterans about foot traffic (the fair declined to share official attendance stats), but the consensus was that Shelter was a welcome addition to the calendar—a good first showing with room for growth.
“We built Shelter with a sense that the industry demanded and deserved something different—three days at the fair confirmed our convictions,” says Quirk. “We saw a vibrant, inclusive community gathering to showcase, share, work and engage in ways that felt fresh and downright joyful. There is absolutely no substitution for being together in person, and we need that kind of connection now more than ever.”
The Big Show
Ten blocks north at the Javits Center, design week’s tentpole event kicked off Sunday. ICFF is a highly subjective show: Every year, some will rave, and others will conspiratorially pull you aside and tell you it isn’t like the old days. By raw numbers, ICFF drew more than 13,000 attendees, roughly the same as last year. Though the fair didn’t publish an official vendor count, it said the attendee-to-exhibitor ratio improved 5 percent, suggesting that the number of brands showing had stayed flat or declined by a hair.
The feeling on the floor was upbeat. The show’s directors, Claire Pijoulat and Odile Hainaut, have been at the helm since 2022, and whatever awkwardness once came from uniting WantedDesign with the big show is gone. The event felt cohesive yet full of interesting surprises: a section dedicated to French craftsmanship here, a lively student section there, plus a wildly Instagrammable installation by Australian artist CJ Hendry made up of enormous inflatable balloon tubes. (Opinions on the balloons, it must be said, were mixed.) And if the show didn’t add vendors in droves, Pijoulat and Hainaut did a good job packing in everyone close for maximum energy.
Standouts, again, are subjective. For BOH editors, they included Canadian studio Molo’s chic, sound-absorbing cardboard softwalls; Nathan Anthony’s voluptuous new Freya 2.0 chaise lounge; and New York artist Ian Love’s colorful hand-carved wooden stools at Wanted. In the center of the show, Japan’s Miyazaki Chair Factory made a simple but stunning display (including some terrazzo-esque seats composed entirely of recycled materials) dedicated to craftsmanship at its highest form. Surely a good sign: More than one fellow exhibitor could be seen marveling at and snapping pics of Miyazaki’s creations.
Interestingly, one subject that didn’t come up a lot on the floor was tariffs. That’s possibly because the ICFF crowd leans more toward domestic and European production than Chinese manufacturing. It could also be due to Trump’s recent rollback of sky-high levies, and a pervasive sense that the numbers would only go down from here. Whatever it was, a subject you couldn’t escape last month at High Point Market didn’t dominate the conversation at ICFF.
Breaking It Down
With premieres and showcases launching as early as May 10, NYCxDesign and events looking to jump on its bandwagon have stretched into a nearly two-week-long endeavor, with happenings across multiple boroughs. In an attempt to streamline the chaos, several brands banded together this year to organize neighborhood-specific open houses—such as the inaugural Chelsea Design Night and SoHo’s third annual Mercer Street Block Party—with extended showroom hours (and lots of free champagne) so that guests could tackle one area at a time instead of running around the city. Cheers to that!
Brooklyn Makes Some Noise
Though events are concentrated in Manhattan, NYCxDesign officially kicked off in Brooklyn, with an opening night gala on May 15 at The Refinery at Domino, the 19th century Williamsburg sugar factory turned penthouse event space on the banks of the East River. In the days that followed, the borough was sprinkled with panels and product launches, from workrooms in Red Hook and Sunset Park’s Industry City to the bespoke boutiques in Boerum Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Manhattan may have more name-brand showrooms per square inch, but as a locus of manufacturing and artisanship, Brooklyn keeps it real.
On Saturday, May 17, Atlantic Avenue held its Day of Design 2025. Capped by the East River on one end and the starchitectural towers of downtown Brooklyn on the other, this particular stretch of the avenue connects the cozy, tony brownstone neighborhoods of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Fort Greene. The blocks around Hoyt and Bond streets specifically—renowned in the 1960s and ’70s as “Antiques Row”—have become home to a charming crop of small galleries and decor shops, including Collier West, Michele Varian, Porta, M.Patmos, The Primary Essentials, Toast, and East Fork’s first retail location outside of the South.
“Every Shadow Is a Color,” an Albers-inspired installation featuring new wood furnishings from Juntos Projects and rustic-chic lighting by Blue Green Works at design firm General Assembly’s storefront, Assembly Line, was a particularly hot ticket on this perfect spring day, with visitors packing the restyled gallery and spilling out onto the wide sidewalk to sip their smoky mezcal palomas (the cocktail of the week, based on purely anecdotal polling). “The idea of design being available only directly to the trade, at spaces like the D&D Building or in the Flatiron district, has really changed,” says Sarah Zames, General Assembly’s founder. “Brooklyn has become a great place to discover independent design, with so much work being made here. And the audience has also really grown, so there’s a strong local market for it too.”
Today, the festival comes to an end in Dumbo, a few subway stops (or a short ferry ride) south of where it began. The formerly industrial area where artists used to squat in abandoned warehouses is now officially recognized as the city’s newest design district, home to more than 150 architecture and design firms—such as BIG, Snøhetta, Hudson Wilder and JAM—and makers like Mark Jupiter and Pensa, as well as headquarters to Etsy and West Elm. There are studio tours all day long, followed by a closing-night party at pioneering supper club Superfine.
Designer Thoughts
For designers, it was a week of nonstop events, panels and networking opportunities. New York–based Antonio DeLoatch sums it up nicely: “This year’s New York design week was a master class in connection—and scheduling. It was a celebration not only of aesthetics, but of storytelling, craftsmanship and the quiet power of gathering.” Highlights for him included the debut of Chelsea Textiles’s new showroom, which he describes as “a space where history and timeless craftsmanship coexisted beautifully”; a panel at John Rosselli & Associates for the D&D Building’s Spring Market, moderated by BOH editor in chief Kaitlin Petersen, which he says “invited us to consider the cultural lineage and narrative depth that textiles bring to our work”; and the aforementioned Shelter and ICFF shows, which “served as a reminder of what’s possible when rising talent, innovation and sustainability converge.”
For Jordan Slocum, co-founder of Brooklyn firm the Brownstone Boys, the week was a showcase of the role that design and architecture play in fostering community and identity in New York. “Design week is something special—I love that the entire [design] community comes together to talk about what’s inspiring them,” he says. “I’m seeing a lot of rich colors, which is exciting, and a lot of big, beautiful storytelling. Design this year feels really personal, and I’m loving having the conversations—whether it’s with other Brooklynites, or Manhattanites, or designers from across the world—about what is inspiring them during these dark times we’re in right now.”
Highlights for Laura Ramirez, founder of Hoboken–based Casalau Design, included the debut of Salt Lake City–based furniture and lighting designer Emily Thurman’s collection at the IRL art gallery in Tribeca. “She basically has a handmade element in all of her pieces,” says Ramirez. “Whether it’s forging, metalworks or woodworking, she collaborates with a bunch of different makers and artisans.” (A standout piece: the Toteme standing lamp, a structural piece made of pumice stone, handsculpted bronze, cast glass and sculptural French oak beams in collaboration with Belgian designer Alexis Mazin, who recycles wood he finds at local flea markets into art.) In addition to attending bigger events like ICFF and Shelter, Ramirez also hit the quirky retailer Quarters for a party celebrating the launch of a new lighting collection, which notably featured a giant five-tiered strawberry shortcake by New York bakery Ninetynin.e that was rumored to require 15 pounds of strawberries to be able to feed nearly 800 people.
On the Scene
Last year the joke was that design week had become design month. This year it wasn’t a joke: The social calendar (often where the real connections are made) was absolutely packed with talks, dinners and ragers starting in early May—and it’s stretching into later this week. To keep it confined to the “official” NYCxDesign window, last Wednesday Vitra debuted its much-anticipated Chinatown showroom with a well-attended party. The Swiss furniture brand hosted guests in the new 6,265-square-foot loft, where they could sip libations from the “Mezcal-tini” fountain while admiring the soaring floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the Manhattan Bridge and, of course, surveying the brand’s collections.
The following day at VFA in SoHo, India-based rug stalwart Jaipur Living debuted “Manchaha: Memories Preserved,” its first-ever U.S. gallery exhibit, and the company’s global sustainability ambassador, creator and influencer Marina Testino, hosted the opening-night reception. In the exhibit, which runs through May 30, the gallery’s walls are lined with the Manchaha collection, each a one-of-a-kind piece crafted using leftover hand-spun yarn with the artisan in full creative control of both the design and the storytelling.
Across the bridge that night, Openhouse magazine and PR firm Hello Human hosted a late-night party at the Brooklyn arts organization Public Records to celebrate the design community. The line to enter stretched down the block. Once inside, guests could access all of the spaces at the venue. The real show, however, was Upstairs, the intimate cocktail bar and listening lounge on the second floor, which housed an immersive installation featuring works by some of the industry’s rising stars, including lighting brand Astraeus Clarke, ceramicist Devin Wilde, ceramic brand Ceramicah and furniture brand Frama, among others.
Friday brought a few more see-and-be-seen events, starting off with a fete at the recently opened Lawson-Fenning showroom celebrating Josh Greene’s brand-new Agapanthus collection. The 4,500-square-foot NoHo loft was packed with industry notables like Zak Profera, Peter Dunham and Joe Lucas, who admired Greene’s colorful new 12-piece furniture line (standouts include the Ashbourne dresser in a bright teal and the sumptuous Fairview lounge chair in a rich mustard) alongside new works by Wilde, ceramicist Addison Woolsey, and a new lighting collection from O&G Studio. Half a mile downtown at the Mercer Street Block Party, Henrybuilt, Nordic Knots, Orior and other design shops within a few-block radius were open late celebrating the festive week. BDDW opened up its expansive showroom on Crosby Street, where the theme was “Big Dave’s Mountain Hunt,” boasting sharpshooting, a table stacked with soft pretzels, a raffle where guests took home big prizes, and a display of new works by founder Tyler Hays.
