This year’s Milan Design Week features a cosy collaboration between Finnish design brand Marimekko and New York artist Laila Gohar, showcasing a bedroom-themed installation and capsule collection that reimagines quiet moments with joyful energy.

From 7 to 13 April, visitors to Teatro Litta will encounter an immersive experience centred around a grand, dreamlike bed, dressed in Marimekko’s iconic archival stripes by Maija Isola. The installation playfully explores all the intimate, creative, and restful activities that happen in bed—from sleeping and reading to daydreaming and sharing conversations—through a curated selection of home textiles, ceramics, and sleepwear.

The project holds special significance for Gohar, who grew up wearing matching Marimekko outfits with her sister, often in the brand’s signature stripes. Decades later, she revisited Marimekko’s vast Helsinki pattern archive, home to over 3,500 prints, where she rediscovered Isola’s bold, rhythmic stripe designs. The resulting capsule collection reinterprets these archival patterns in a contemporary palette of sky blues, citrus yellows, rich plums, and berry reds, applied to relaxed yet elegant pyjama sets, bedding, sleep masks, and tableware.

“The starting point was Laila’s maxim, ‘If it’s ironed, you can wear it out,’” explains Rebekka Bay, Marimekko’s Creative Director. “We designed pyjamas that transition seamlessly from bed to brunch, alongside a full suite of bedroom objects that bring Marimekko’s optimism into daily rituals.”

Stripes have long been a cornerstone of Marimekko’s design language, continuously reinvented through new techniques and colour combinations. This collection highlights their timeless versatility, from dense, organic arrangements to crisp, graphic lines. “This collaboration feels full circle,” says Gohar. “Marimekko’s stripes were part of my earliest memories, and now they’re part of my creative world in a whole new way.”