Photo: Gemma Warren Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story On a busy street near the Duomo in Milan this past April, the usual scenes you’d expect to unfold on a frenetic morning in the city were visible: the yellow trams rumbling by, locals sipping their espressos from zinc counters, well-dressed members of the city’s design and fashion sets whizzing past on bicycles.
And if you’d followed one of the latter, you’d very likely have ended up at Palazzo Acerbi, a 17th-century Baroque palace on the Corso di Porto Romano. Or, more specifically, in its central courtyard, admiring a soaring installation of a gridded wooden sculpture. More curiously, when you looked closer, you would have noticed that they were actually modular chairs, stacked in a cascading wave like a kind of contemporary ziggurat.
Photo: Piergiorgio Sorgetti Heading up the sweeping staircase to the piano nobile, however, the reason for this intervention quickly became clear: it was the grand unveiling of Kelly Wearstler’s first collection with H&M Home . Down a terrazzo-floored corridor, lamps articulated by stainless steel wires gently glowed beneath a linen-like fabric covering both lampshade and tube, which invited viewers into a series of rooms covered with chintzy floral fabrics, reflected across wonky, funhouse-like mirrors with trompe l’oeil urn-shaped vases crafted from blackened pine. In one room, cloud-like modular bouclé armchairs—which can be paired to form a love seat, or arranged in multiples to make a sofa—were stacked to create a plush mountain stretching two-thirds of the way up the wall, leading the eye up to an elaborately frescoed ceiling.
Photo: Piergiorgio Sorgetti Throughout the rooms, Kelly Wearstler herself was buzzing around in a gray tailored jumpsuit, enthusiastically explaining the details behind every piece—and the cleverly conceived installations that showcased it, created in collaboration with the fashion-favorite design practice Studio Boum .
There’s a word that Wearstler kept returning to when describing it all: storytelling. “We wanted the objects to unfold—and then take hold of—all the different rooms in the house,” she said.
Photo: Piergiorgio Sorgetti While Wearstler is best known for her high-end residential projects and her work in hospitality—notably, in the latter case, for her role as the central design partner for Ian Schrager’s Public Hotels in New York and West Hollywood—she’s tended to be more selective with her collaborations, working on smaller collections in the past with the likes of Farrow & Ball and The Rug Company .
Like many designers working at her level, she found herself frustrated that the price points of what she makes typically remain out of reach for most. “Being able to do something that is accessible to so many people and launching in 40 countries, there was something really cool about that,” she added. “I want to help people to live better, to be creative, and to have really timeless design in their home—design that has a point of view, and that feels unique.”
Photo: Sean Thomas Photo: Sean Thomas Wearstler noted that she had long followed H&M’s partnerships with fashion designers —she was a particular fan of their Margiela collaboration back in 2012—and so, when the Swedish retail giant came knocking, it was a quick yes. She quickly learned the project would come with a few constraints.
“Immediately they were like, ‘Everything has to come in a 24 x 48 inch box. And it can only be 20 kil…