If you can believe it, 2025 marks our 20th year covering design, which means that we’re now witnessing an entirely new generation experience how design week in New York unfolds. Does this make us feel old? Yes. But it also makes us feel wiiiise, like we might be the best conduit for understanding how design week in New York came to be the unruly, too-large-to-see-everything, too-long-to-even-agree-when-it-falls thing it is today. When we started, in 2005, ICFF was the biggest thing going. At night, we’d drink prosecco at parties for companies like Boffi or Cappellini; a party at the late, great design emporium Moss was the most exciting invitation of the week unless you were willing to take the L train to Williamsburg to drink beer in the backyard of The Future Perfect (which we were). In the wake of the financial crisis, Sight Unseen decided we could take things up a notch, embarking on an eight-year run of scrappy design fairs that saw us showcasing independent designers everywhere from a Japanese butcher shop to the uppermost floors of the Gordon Bunshaft–designed Grace Building. Post-pandemic, there was a vacuum — and a very real need to mint money — from which the framework for today’s design landscape emerged. Independent designers began opening up decadently designed showrooms for their own work, new galleries sprouted up eager to work with younger, more experimental designers — and yet while there was a “rising tides lift all boats” approach at play, it still felt like the bottom had fallen out. Where could people go where they might actually be able to afford the work on view? Where could young designers without a platform show their work? With American design’s newfound layer of glitz, had we lost some of the grit and texture that defined those earlier days?

We’re happy to report that this year, a lot of that texture came back. In many cases, designers took matters into their own hands, curating exhibitions of their peers, from NJ Roseti, Kiki Goti, and Caleb Ferris’s Forced Perspective to the Jess Fugler and Eliza Axelson-Chidsey–curated Paraphernalia showcase at Fredericks & Mae. But in general, opportunities were everywhere for showing new work, from an incredibly solid debut for the new trade fair Shelter, to the Hello Human–curated showcase at Public Records, to yes, the OG mothership that is now ICFF/Wanted. We found excellent work by ex-RISD kids in a Chinatown basement, design pieces mingling with fashion at boutiques like Colbo and Knickerbocker, and, a true sign of the times, quite of bit of great work in extremely expensive new residential developments. Yesterday we featured our favorite independent designers; today, we’re focusing on our favorite group exhibitions from the week-turned-month that was.

The Semiotics of Dressing at Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery

I previewed the new Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery exhibition a week early at a trunk show for A History of Frogs, which meant I got to luxuriate, nearly alone, in the assemblage of objects Sullivan had gathered for her latest outing, The Semiotics of Dressing. It’s no secret how much I admire Sullivan’s program and how well I think the vintage and contemporary pieces work in concert with each other, flattening time, but this one was next level. Ongoing obsessions on view include Studio Kuhlmann, who showed a starburst metal music box with a pull chain and her signature welded pendants; Zoé Mohm, the French jeweler who made delicate silver-encrusted combs; and Anne Libby, whose cast-aluminum blinds are a favorite. New obsession unlocked: Voghera Zonca’s late 20th century Sunflower Table Lamp? Somebody buy me this thing. Photos © William Jess Laird

Outside/In at Lyle Gallery

Aliyah Salmon and Clarissa Guzman

Inderjeet Sandhu

Kawabi

Vy Voi

Studio Tenjung

Jaye Kim

Platform Studio

Clarissa Guzman of Platform Studio’s Brutalist candelabra (above) is a serious contender for our favorite piece of New York Design Week, but OUTSIDE/IN, an exhibition presented by Hello Human and Lyle Gallery, was uniformly good. The curators chose designers who are grappling with questions about identity, materiality, and self-determination, and who often exist outside the establishment. We also loved the Dutch-Indian designer Inderjeet Sandhu’s glass-blown meditation on the banana as a symbol of exoticism. Photos © Jonathan Hokklo

Forced Perspective

So much delighted me about Forced Perspective, not least of which its location: the Greenpoint eatery Radio Star, whose pistachio and bubblegum walls recall Milan’s Bar Luce. The exhibition, curated by NJ Roseti, Kiki Goti, Caleb Ferris, and Vincent Staropoli, was designed with care, backdropped by a Wallpaper Projects x The Perfect Nothing Catalog collab and featuring laser-cut placards; the roster of designers was an excellent sampling of emerging and mid-career talent. “The concept of Forced Perspective is rooted in its dual meanings,” write the curators. “On one level, it refers to the manipulated perception and scale, inspiring vignettes where art, design, and space converge. On another, it speaks to the “forced perspectives” imposed by political and economic power structures, shaping how we perceive and interact with the world.” We particularly liked Luke Malaney’s unsettling copper throne and Jesse Groom’s offset ladder, which he calls “a borderline dysfunctional vertical assistance object.”

Every Color is a Shadow at Assembly Line

Juntos Projects anchored the installation at Assembly Line‘s Boerum Hill shop, with additions from Blue Green Works (that’s their new Daisy sconce, above) and Atelier de Troupe, among others. Called Every Shadow is a Color, the show takes its titular and conceptual inspiration from Josef Albers’ seminal book, Interaction of Color. The show explored how color is affected by light and shadow and debuted four new pieces by Juntos as well as sketches, prototypes, and color samples that illuminate the studio’s design process. Photos © Sean Davidson

The Future Perfect

Lindsey Adelman

Lucia Massari

Riikka Piippo

Kristin Victoria Barron

Women ruled design week at The Future Perfect, starting with a ground-floor installation by Lindsey Adelman, who explored the addition of ceramic to her sweeping light fixtures. The garden level, in a joint exhibition with Tiwa Gallery, was filled with hand-painted furniture by Faye Toogood as well as hand-drawn paper lights anchored by splayed-legged metal fixtures with ball feet. Upstairs Kristin Victoria Barron debuted animalistic pieces in alabaster and ceramic, made from clay dug up near her studio in the countryside of Spain. Glass artist Lucia Massari and ceramic sculptures by Riikka Piippo rounded out the show.

Paraphernalia—Desire

Joël Brodovsky-Adams

Nancy Kim x Michael Yarinsky

Pete Oyler

Tino Seubert

Jess Fugler and Eliza Chidsey-Axelrod debuted their second annual Paraphernalia exhibition, this one under the theme of Desire, at Fredericks & Mae’s Dimes Square shop. Each designer was allowed to create a work occupying a 12” x 12” footprint; some of our favorites included Joël Brodovsky-Adams’ glass vessels, Nancy Kim and Michael Yarinsky’s treasure boxes, Pete Oyler’s cast-bronze fauna, and Tino Seubert’s ashtray. Photos © Matthew Gordon

Jonald Dudd at Shelter

Ankita Bhat

Christian Borger

Steven Bukowski

Carl Durkow

Jackrabbit Studio

Rest Energy

Miles Gracey

Anna Gukov

Jed Heuer

Yuxuan Huang

Lisa Max

Dan McMahon

Elizabeth New

Scott Newlin

Basia Pruszyńska

Basia Pruszyńska

Saw Earth

Suna Bonametti

Devin Wilde

In their 10th year in business, Jonald Dudd — now the longest design-week showcase running — asked Chen & Kai to guest curate the show, called “Grateful Dudd,” as always prioritizing works that prize “personal expression and formal exploration over commercial conformity” — much like their namesakes. It was the largest showcase of the week, featuring more than 60 designers and running the length of what would amount to several booths at Shelter, not to mention having some of the best (only?) merch in the game. Some of our favorites are above!

Egg Collective’s Knock On Wood

The phrase “knock on wood” is thought to stem from the belief that spirits lived in trees and that a knock might call upon the gods for protection or to ward off bad luck. For their group show of that same name, Egg Collective asked contemporary artists who work in wood to play with this theme. Our favorite piece on view was a mysteriously valet-like chair by Minjae Kim complete with hidden drawer.

Colony

At Colony’s show The Independents, curator Jean Lin showed a cross-section of work by past, present, and future collaborators, including Chen and Kai, Pete Oyler, Kawabi, SSS Atelier, and Colony residency graduates like M.Pei Studio and Thomas Yang Studio.

Songs of a Decoy

Songs of a Decoy presented the work of five emerging artists and recent RISD grads: Aydan Huseynli, Cameron Lasson, Jonathan Dinetz, Kira Wilson, and Rusty Adelstein. The exhibition explored the slippery realities of Western culture and the mythologies that emanate from the objects that surround us.

Verso

Ries Estudio

Palma

Mike Ruiz-Serra

Yuxuan Huang

For design week, Verso took over 9 Chapel Street, a new building by SO-IL architects. On the ground floor, the Argentine studio Ries debuted Pasto, a collection of cast aluminum pieces developed using native pampas grasses as the lost molds. Elsewhere in the building, Verso showed solo works by Guilherme Wentz and another edition of its Verso & Friends group show, featuring designers like Yuxuan Huang, Mike Ruiz-Serra, and Palma.

Paradise Trouvé at Atelier Jouffre

Okay, we have not yet been to Atelier Jouffre in Long Island City but these images are telling us we need to! For Paradis Trouvé, curator Taylor Scott Ross had Sunshine Thacker create an incredible ceramic mural; Brett Miller of Jackrabbit debuted a plush lounge chair; and the in-house studio launched the Henge Sofa, the latest addition to the growing RRP x Jouffre upholstery collection, inspired by the eroded forms of Neolithic henge sites. Photos © Tiphaine Seite

Dudd Haus at Blu Dot

Steven Bukowski

East Otis

Scott Newlin

Malcolm Majer

Carl Durkow

What is Gen-Z and Gen Alpha’s relationship to the Blu Dot Strut table? The once ubiquitous piece launched 20 years ago, and in celebration, the Minneapolis-based company partnered with DUDD HAUS, the recently opened Philadelphia gallery arm of Jonald Dudd, on an exhibition called “This Is Not a Strut.” (But … do the kids know what a Strut is? Inquiring minds want to know!) The exhibition featured 21 new works commissioned from DUDD HAUS members based on the concept of “strut,” “both as a noun (the engineering technique for creating a rigid structure) and verb (to walk with swagger).”