Sydney designer Shona McElroy of Smac Studio travels to Milan for the first time, hosted by CDK Stone and est living, and returns with a renewed conviction: the best design doesn’t chase what’s next, it deepens what already endures.
In partnership with CDK Stone.
Milan during design week is relentless in the best possible way; creatives everywhere, installations spilling out of courtyards, a city that dresses up and means it. “I was really struck by the overall city and how fashionable everyone is there, how encouraged you are to dress up, which feels so great coming from such a casual Australian pace of life.” It was a fitting entry point for a week that would challenge everything she thought she knew about where good design is heading.
The second installment in CDK Stone’s Designer Lens series follows interior designer Shona McElroy on her debut visit to Milan Design Week, traversing across the frescoed grandeur of Palazzo Clerici, walking through Villa Necchi, exploring Nilufar Gallery and the spectacle of EuroCucina, a clear counter-narrative emerged, one that resonated deeply with McElroy’s own sensibility. “The biggest takeaway for me was that there are enduring pieces and themes in design that Milan showed us; we don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel.” She offers the analogy of a well-crafted black Chanel handbag—something that looks good for a decade precisely because it was never chasing the moment. “A similar sort of thing was happening with furniture, shapes that have been around since the 60s, 70s, 80s. They weren’t throwing them out. They were saying: this works, and now we have a new fabric, an outdoor version.”
Designer Shona McElroy arrives in Milan for the first time, making her first stop the iconic Duomo, one of the world’s great architectural landmarks and a fitting introduction to a city that layers centuries of craft and beauty into its every surface.
The marble quarries of Carrara, a mountain quite literally ‘carved open’. Standing at the quarry face, McElroy found the scale impossible to prepare for.
Inside the quarry walls, McElroy captures the colours and veins of the stone firsthand, an exercise in understanding marble not as a finish, but as a living material with depth, movement, and provenance.
Touring the slab warehouse alongside the CDK Stone team, McElroy runs her hand across a white quartz slab, one of her standout discoveries from the trip. “I feel a lot more educated now on the stone selection process—sizes, consistency in colour, how the veining runs through to the next slab.”
It’s a shift she’s bringing home to Sydney; a renewed confidence in layering, in investing in quality, in trusting the edit. But it was beyond the streets of Milan, on the winding road up to Carrara, that something more elemental took hold. Accompanying CDK Stone on their marble-in-the-making quarry tour, McElroy found herself standing at the face of a mountain quite literally carved open. “You get a sense of how grand the physical world actually is. The idea of being able to open a mountain, find all this colour, and utilise it in our day-to-day application, it’s really, really cool.” The scale, she admits, simply cannot be conveyed. “The only other way I would have had a similar feeling would be standing on top of a ski mountain and looking down. This was the opposite, looking up and thinking: wow, that’s massive.”
The experience extended into the selection process itself, touring the slab warehouses alongside CDK Stone’s own team, whose diligence in sourcing proved as instructive as the quarry itself. “I feel a lot more educated now on the stone selection process. Slab sizes, consistency in colour, how the veining runs through to the next slab; they’re all things I looked for, but now I can relate them directly back to quality.”
McElroy left Italy with what she describes simply as “a fire in my belly” not only for design, but for the creative community that sustains it. The key message she’s taken back to her team is characteristically precise: be confident, push yourself, and layer. “If you push yourself, the design will always be better.”
Some trips inform, and others transform and for Sydney-based interior designer Shona McElroy of SMAC Studio, Milan Design Week 2026 was the latter. From the mountains of Carrara to the streets of Sydney, the translation is underway.
Shona McElroy of Smac Studio travelled to Milan Design Week with CDK Stone as part of the Designer Lens series.
McElroy’s first stop after landing: Villa Necchi Campiglio, the Art Deco residence whose layered materiality and enduring elegance set the tone for her week ahead.
The ornate marble steps and grand entrance of Villa Necchi Campiglio serve as a reminder that the best design doesn’t chase what’s next; it deepens what already endures.
McElroy in conversation with Amedeo Musazzi at the Viabizzuno installation during Milan Design Week, one of many encounters on the streets of Milan that reinforced her conviction in craft, quality, and creative community.
A quiet moment in the gardens of Villa Necchi Campiglio with a coffee in hand, poppies in full bloom. Between the installations and the industry, McElroy believes that Milan has a way of offering stillness when you need it.
