Natalie Stoclet

1 month ago | forbes.com | Natalie Stoclet

The Incas believed the vicuña had special powers. Killing one was forbidden. Only royalty could wear its wool—so fine it floats off your palm, so rare it was called the Gold of the Andes. Even now, it can take four wild vicuñas to make a single scarf. Each one, roaming the Andean highlands in high altitude, produces just 150 grams of fiber per year. Shearing happens only once every three years, still sometimes done by hand, in silence, as it has been for centuries.

2 months ago | forbes.com | Natalie Stoclet

Jesper Brodin was nothing like I expected. A formidable CEO, yes—but without the polished sheen or corporate distance. At Milan Design Week, while much of the design world leaned into spectacle, Brodin sat with me in a converted warehouse in Navigli, discussing carbon emissions and circularity with the calm of someone more interested in systems than soundbites.

2 months ago | whitewall.art | Natalie Stoclet

Milan Design Week can feel like a scavenger hunt. You don’t really “see” everything—you edit in real time. Your feet hurt, your phone dies, you forget to eat lunch, but somewhere between an off-site in a crumbling palazzo and a courtyard show staged like a Kubrick dream sequence, you spot it: the thing. The thing you didn’t know you needed to see until you did. This year, I went hunting for those objects. The ones that stop time. The ones that hint at their makers’ obsessions.

2 months ago | whitewall.art | Natalie Stoclet

There are two Milans during Design Week. The one you see—loud, crowded, endlessly photographed—and the one that lives behind closed doors, tucked into quiet courtyards, back tables at old trattorias, design studios with espresso machines older than you are. If you know where to look, Milan opens up like a well-worn sketchbook, full of stories etched in marble and etched onto linen napkins.

Mar 24, 2025 | forbes.com | Natalie Stoclet

Last spring, I was sitting in a quiet Milanese courtyard with a Negroni Sbagliato, watching the late afternoon light stretch across worn stone. Next to me, a designer sketched furiously. “It’s either genius or a logistical nightmare,” they muttered as their friend glanced up from a cigarette, unimpressed.