The Milan Edit with Giulio Cappellini | Inside the Mind of a Design Tastemaker
📅 Aug 10, 2026The Third Space11 MIN7 VIEWS21 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
Welcome to The Milan Edit, a special series by The Third Space in collaboration with STIR, unfolding from the heart of Milan Design Week.
Hosted by Devika Khosla, The Third Space is a platform for conversations that explore the ideas, memories, and experiences shaping the creative world beyond the finished object.
In this final episode, Devika is joined by Giulio Cappellini, one of the most influential figures in contemporary Italian design. As the creative force behind Cappellini, he has played a defining role in discovering and nurturing some of the world's most important designers, while...
What Giulio Cappellini said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Giulio Cappellini, artistic director of IGV Group, discussed his approach to discovering designers, emphasizing instinct and curiosity over a fixed method. He travels widely, meeting both established and young talents, and recently introduced a young Indian designer who studied in Milan. He stressed the importance of passion and professionalism in young designers. Cappellini described his role as creating a 'fil rouge' connecting diverse design approaches within the Cappellini collection, respecting both the designer's DNA and the company's. He clarified he is not a designer but a 'Sunday afternoon designer,' preferring to design the company itself. He explained the decision to join a larger group to secure the company's future, as his children do not follow his career. For the Milan installation, he created virtual homes without walls, emphasizing freedom and mixing products from different designers and companies. He advised young designers to 'do few things, but do good things' and to work in teams. He concluded that design should make people dream and smile, especially in uncertain times.
Key takeaways
Cappellini discovered designers like Marcel Wanders, Jasper Morrison, and Marc Newson through travel and instinct, not a set method.
He recently introduced a young designer from India who studied in Milan, showing his focus on emerging global talent.
Cappellini says he is not a designer but a 'Sunday afternoon designer,' preferring to design the company itself.
Welcome to the Milan Edit 2026. Today we have with us a dynamic personality who has an innate sense of discovering people and their designs before the world even sees it, Giulio Cappellini.
Giulio, you have discovered some brilliant minds over a period of time and some of the greatest people that I admire are Marcel Wanders, you've discovered Jasper Morrison and Marc Newson, so many amazing, amazing talented people. Now, tell me something, is this an instinct that you had from day one or is this something that you've developed over a period of time?
No, I think that, you know, I have to say that first of all, there is not one method I take to follow to discover a new designer. Also, if I'm really very curious, I have the possibility to travel a lot and so traveling I can meet, yeah, on one side maybe very important established designer, on the other side the young talented students or designers. And it's the way that I found people like Newson or Dixon or Morrison and so on. You know, everything comes from my stomach, from my heart. That means that sometimes maybe I see a prototype, I see a drawing and I say, 'Wow, it's fantastic. I want to have it in my home tomorrow morning.'
Or sometimes as I meet someone and speaking with him or her, I find this person absolutely interesting. And you know, from the first approach, sometimes to arrive to a product it takes months or years. Sometimes maybe we didn't arrive to make something interesting, but it's always interesting to discover someone in the world. And you know, at the beginning I started to travel here in Europe or after Japan, North America. Now I'm absolutely very interested in discovering new talents in some other part of the world like the Middle East, Far East, like India. Last year I introduced a very young designer who studied here in Milan from India. So I think that you can find really nice interesting young talented designers everywhere in the world.
Yes, and anyway something that again comes looking at the personality and also I think that for a young designer the most important thing that is important for me is that they have to be absolutely very professional and they have to work with a lot of passion because I think that passion, passion, passion is really the most important thing.
So what I also find fascinating is that, you know, when you're discovering different people, they also have a very distinct and a very different style of design. They have a different language. For example, the Proust chair was very different from what Jasper Morrison did and then Marc Newson did his very futuristic style. So how do you navigate between all these different genres?
You know, yes. I like always to work with people with a completely different approach to design because I think that really no minimal is interesting, like organic, like classic, like pop and so on. Thinking to Cappellini, for example, we have really very, very different people who work on the Cappellini collection. And you know, me as art director of the company, I have to try to create a sort of fil rouge that connects the approach to design of those different people. Anyway, I think that it is always very interesting how a different designer reacts to the spirit, to the DNA of a company because again, the most important thing is to do the right product for the right company, you know? So, I think that as a company, we have to try to respect the DNA of the designer and the designer has to try to understand very well the DNA of the company. I think that to establish the right feeling is important. If there is not this feeling, it's very difficult to arrive to do a good product.
11 more exchanges in this transcript
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Cappellini, G. (2026, August 10). The Milan Edit with Giulio Cappellini | Inside the Mind of a Design Tastemaker [Interview transcript]. The Third Space. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1193156/
MLA
Giulio Cappellini. "The Milan Edit with Giulio Cappellini | Inside the Mind of a Design Tastemaker." The Third Space, 10 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1193156/.
BibTeX
@misc{cappellini2026_1193156,
author = {Giulio Cappellini},
title = {The Milan Edit with Giulio Cappellini | Inside the Mind of a Design Tastemaker},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Third Space. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1193156/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
