It is an interiors fair, but that doesn’t stop fashion brands from stomping the ground at Salone del Mobile — Milan’s much revered annual design event. This year, fashion brands dialled up their charm offensive with some presenting interior pieces inspired by their brand heritage, others unveiling special collaborations with the design community up for a money-can’t-buy experience.

For its Natural Motion installation, Nike kitted out a warehouse with ten designers and furniture makers. Max Lamp floated blocks of granite and aluminium atop a thin plane of compressed air and Martino Gamper wove colourful casings for drums using Nike’s Flyknit fabric.

The Swedish high street label COS collaborated with the Japanese super-architect Sou Fujimoto who transformed the derelict Cinema Arti in Milan’s San Babila district into an immersive emotional experience, Forest of Light. Especially composed sounds, spotlights, fog and mirrors that responded to visitor movement created moving cones or ‘trees’ of light. You can dismiss these installations as guerrilla marketing, but undeniably, they allow a larger cross-section of people to feel for design.

While architect Giulio Cappellini led ten young Italian designers on their quest to interpret the haute footwear brand Tod’s for a limited edition collection to benefit L’Abilità, a Milan-based non-profit for families with disabled children, Loewe’s creative director, Jonathan Anderson, took it upon himself to re-imagine the label’s trademark leather work. Applied to the surfaces of early 20th-century British furniture, this collection is not available for sale. Instead, they presented leather pouches and notebooks along the same styles for those who wanted to own a piece of Loewe history.

Armani Casa continued to build on its DNA, but if it presented anything path breaking remains debatable. In the hands of architect, designer and decorator Thierry Lemaire, Fendi Casa pleasantly surprised. In brass, fine woods, lacquer and leather, the brand refreshingly refrained from excessive use of ‘F’. Missoni played with yarn and weaves… again, but sidestepped predictability in its presentation — an installation by artist Aldo Lanzini explored the label’s extensive archive of textiles with a glowing village, Knitown.

Tomas Maier, Bottega Veneta’s creative director, unveiled his latest designs for the label’s home collection, honing in on the fashion label’s affinity for high craftsmanship. Meticulously crafted pieces such as sterling silver collectible boxes, marble-topped chests of drawers fully upholstered in suede or leather and set of bronze tables produced in collaboration with Italian designer Osanna Visconti di Modrone were produced at the label’s dedicated furniture atelier in Vicenza, in the Veneto region of Italy.

Marni remains in love with Columbia and I love it more for it. For its new furniture and lighting collections, the label hand-wove dreams in PVC yarn, manufactured in Columbia. Bright, colourful and high-tech, these collections captured the essence of the fashion label without depending on an over-exposed logo or motif. On the other hand, Versace (as expected) continued to flashily shove its Medusa logo down our consciousness. However, I found myself really enjoying its Mesedia chair. Medusa is still at the heart of this chair; it’s the play of form in climate proof aluminium that makes this piece not your typical Versace.

For its Salone 2016 presentation, Kartell stood strong on a collaboration with Alessandro Dell’Acqua, the creative director for womenswear and footwear label N°21. A rectangular table lamp with an Art Deco flair, the Tati lamp marks the synthesis between Kartell’s trademark production know-how and N°21’s unique sense of levity with its macramé lace shade.

Fashion and interiors have a long history of playing off each other. The showcase at Salone del Mobile 2016 was testimony that this relationship is growing stronger with time.

- Pratyush Sarup is design manager at one of the UAE’s premium interiors firms