Milan design week seemed to show that the industry has given up on reducing its planetary impact and creating products for regular people, writes Max Fraser.

If last year's Milan design week felt like a return to a version of pre-pandemic editions, this year's felt like a hyped-up mega-festival.
It's difficult to attain reliable figures for the number of individual events that took place across the city (reports range from several hundred to more than 1,000), as well as the main commercial trade event, Salone del Mobile. But whatever the actual figure is, this year the visitor experience had certainly intensified.
There were many times when I felt I had been brazenly "data-captured"
One visible sign of this was the queues. They felt particularly acute this year, presumably off the back of a surge of attendees. According to figures published by Salone del Mobile, visitor numbers increased by 17.1 per cent this year, with 361,417 people recorded through the trade fair's turnstiles. Has Milan design week become a victim of its own popularity" I heard reports of design revellers waiting for up to three hours to enter some of the shows. Queues were often slowed by the requirement to register. One's details are now commonly harvested by brands and there were many times when I felt I had been brazenly "data-captured".
Once inside, one often slots into a human conveyor formation, shuffling hurriedly through the venue surrounded by people who seem principal...