“True design is not about trends, but about resonance — how an object speaks to space, memory and the person who chooses it.” — MAEVE, PAD London 2025

Last year’s impressions were more modest, with greater confusion about certain stands. In 2025, the fair transformed into a mirror-like showcase of time — beautiful, slightly uneven, yet strikingly precise in reflecting the contemporary world. That reflection itself became its greatest attraction. Though some works seemed to pose the silent mid-20th-century question, “Have we fallen out with the God of beauty?”, the accompanying notes reassured that nothing was amiss — only that, for some pieces, concept outweighs aesthetics, another distinct mark of our era.

Now in its seventeenth edition, the 2025 fair proved the most geographically diverse: 67 galleries from 20 countries, 11 of them participating in the London edition for the first time (PAD also takes place in Paris). Newcomers such as PIK’D from Beirut and NM Art & Design from Cyprus marked new directions — from the Middle East to the Mediterranean.

“Today, collectible design is less about capitals and more about individual stories — about how objects resonate with place, memory and the people who choose them.” — Patrick Perrin (AD Middle East, 2025)

If last year PAD felt like an archival fair, this time it became clear that it only seemed that way. Perhaps curators, gallerists, and collectors have finally moved past the post-COVID crisis and now look to the future with optimism, seeking new names with renewed enthusiasm. The artists themselves are keeping pace, catching trends and responding to buyers’ expectations with bold experiments, bright colours, and unconventional materials.

This year, PAD feels like a museum of the present: furniture stands beside jewellery art, bronze meets textiles, glass merges with ceramics. Eclecticism has given way to a new wholeness — design as a way of thinking. One can see how each element complements the next, how beauty itself becomes part of daily life — and judging by the red sale dots, that beauty is finding many homes.

The central themes of PAD 2025 were material, craftsmanship, and sustainability. Handwork and craft are no longer nostalgia — they are an artistic statement. At the stands of Friedman Benda, Nilufar, and Galerie FUMI, craftsmanship is presented not as a repetition of tradition but as its evolution — particularly fascinating to observe in an age dominated by AI and digital art.

Faye Toogood presented a series of objects reminiscent of fragments from prehistoric caves. Critics at Wallpaper called her collection “the archaeology of emotions.” Toogood once again proved that modesty of form can sound louder than any marble.

The jewellery section was notably conceptual. Works by Inessa Kovaleva drew considerable attention, presented by the dynamic gallery Karry Berreby Jewelry, whose curators skillfully mix contemporary creators with vintage and occasionally antique classics.

Hemmerle remained as consistent, witty, and exquisite as ever — pieces that invite admiration again and again.

Among unexpected discoveries were three necklaces and a bracelet at Glenn Spiro’s stand — amber, turquoise, bone, and antique gold inserts forming meticulously constructed pieces with unconventional technical solutions. Everything — including the very approach of combining antique elements within contemporary pieces (a practice also characteristic of the brand Lenaginarium) — came together in thoughtfully conceived works distinguished by unexpected technical solutions. A stand that truly gave pause for thought.

“Scent is a kind of color; we read a fragrance much like we see a stone.” — James de Givench, founder of Taffin

At last, there was an opportunity to see, touch, and even listen to the creations of the New York magician — Taffin. The gallery presented not only jewellery but also fragrances transformed into visual objects. That encounter alone made PAD 2025 worth visiting. Once again, it became clear that all art — jewellery, furniture, decorative — must be experienced physically: seen, touched, tried on. Even the highest-resolution images on websites and marketplaces cannot convey the textures, the weight, and the tactile harmony of materials.

But back to scents… In the Taffin Parfums line, the fragrance Le Rouge No.1795 became a personal revelation of the fair. Its notes — leather, vetiver, cardamom, and ginger — are perfectly echoed in the design of its packaging: the warm red-amber hue seems to visualise the scent, while the wooden cap adds a tactile pleasure to the composition. As Wallpaper noted, “color and fragrance in Taffin are two dimensions of the same gesture.” What is sold here is not perfume, but a memory — a small emotional artefact sealed in glass. It’s a game of recognition, where each viewer chooses their own colour-scent, as a jeweller would choose a stone. Suddenly, it becomes clear why a jewellery house would create a project about fragrances — after all, it’s not so far from the world of gems.

Vikram Goyal is an artist who brilliantly conducts metal and gives it new poetry — another personal revelation. His works, presented by Nilufar Gallery, dismantle our familiar ideas about material. The Indian artist, working with bronze and brass, creates metaphysical objects in which metal becomes not heavy, but breathing. Goyal is one of those who turn craft into philosophy. His light wall compositions and furniture forms balance between architecture and jewellery art. Within them, one can feel an Eastern ornament that echoes the landscape of sand dunes. “I want the surface to resonate and for light to live within it,” the artist says in an interview for Nilufar Gallery — and it seems he has succeeded. At PAD, his series Gilded Silence — delicate reliefs with mother-of-pearl inlays — became a quiet counterpoint to the fair’s dazzling eclecticism. There is no noise in them, only air, glow, and timelessness. Objects without any clear temporal or national identity fascinate — you approach them, and they “catch” you without explanation or lengthy captions.

Of course, PAD is not only art but also a marketplace — and no amount of beauty conceals that. On one stand, a coffee table sold for £68,000, while nearby stood a bench whose concept was described as “the poetry of utility.” The irony is that even furniture here comes with its own manifesto. As The Art Newspaper aptly noted, “There’s always a touch of theatre in PAD — but it’s a theatre about ourselves, about how we want to see our homes.” Indeed, all of it revolves around the psychology of desire. Do we see ourselves reflected in these objects, or do we wish to hide behind rare artefacts and the selections of famous gallerists?

PAD London turned out to be not just a fair, but an X-ray of contemporary taste. It shows how the elite art market becomes a laboratory for new sensations — where fragrances turn into colours, metal becomes breath, and design becomes confession. Many visitors themselves resemble works of art — with a curated personal style, taste, and aesthetic manifesto. As critic Nathalie Sarazen puts it, “PAD is not a market of things, but a market of ideas about things. Here, people buy not furniture, but its meaning.”

Perhaps that’s why, walking away from Berkeley Square, one feels a faint déjà vu — as if leaving not an exhibition, but a theatre of time. And though everything has already happened, you long to return, to look again, to try things on, to fix them in memory — to keep a piece of it in your own life, even if just for a while.

Visiting such fairs is truly worthwhile — they train the eye, refine the taste. If the visitor is an artist, PAD prompts the right questions about their own work. If a collector — it’s a reason to reconsider their collection and its evolution. And for the ordinary viewer, it simply shows what’s worth striving for.