Inside the 25-year design journey of Marcel Wanders and Moooi.
Back in 2001, design provocateur Marcel Wanders found himself surrounded by millions of ideas that no one wanted to produce—concepts, sketches, prototypes, and designs, both his own and those of fellow creatives.
“I was convinced I was going to do something amazing,” he recalls. “But at the same time, I hoped that maybe, one day, someone would make a mold for one of my designs.”
Those unrealized ideas would become the seeds of Moooi. Rather than waiting for validation from manufacturers, Wanders chose to create a platform of his own—one that embraced the unproven, the unconventional, and the unknown.
“I wanted to build my own vision,” he says. “Not find it somewhere else and follow it. Something that was mine.”
Twenty-five years later, the Dutch lifestyle company he co-founded ontinues to push forward, driven by unexpected beauty and the fertile tension between uncertainty and belief. Its philosophy remains rooted in what it calls “a life extraordinary”—whether expressed through a product, a proposal, or an entire immersive environment.
With equal parts confidence and creative restlessness, Wanders decided to do it himself. Moooi became a platform for ideas before they were proven, a stage for the unknown before it became accepted.
“I wasn’t willing to wait. Nobody trusted us,” Wanders shared during the company’s milestone presentation at Milan’s Salone del Mobile. “And not only me. So many young designers had the same problem.”
For Wanders, growth has never been about becoming bigger for the sake of scale. It is about going deeper—into ideas, into mistakes, into setbacks, and into the unexpected discoveries that emerge from them. The space between certainty and doubt, success and failure, remains fertile ground. It is a living environment shaped by passion, curiosity, emotion, and the tensions and questions that come with being creative. Those are the qualities Moooi chooses to celebrate today.
Personally, encountering Marcel Wanders and the Moooi universe during Milan Design Week in 2018 remains one of the most memorable design presentations we have experienced. It was a snowball of feelings and functionality—a fantastical environment where emotion, dreams, storytelling, and design converged through the vision of its prolific founder. Years later, that impression still lingers.
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The presentation was never just about introducing new products. It felt immersive, theatrical, and deeply emotive—a form of world-building where every object belonged to a larger narrative. New collections coexisted with references to the past, including Moooi’s hauntingly beautiful “Museum of Extinct Animals” motifs. There was a sense of wonder in the air as visitors sat on furniture, ran their hands across surfaces, and examined details up close. The experience invited curiosity rather than consumption, encouraging guests to explore, imagine, and linger.
That ability to create entire worlds—not merely products—has long distinguished Moooi from many of its contemporaries. The company sells furniture, lighting, and objects, but what it truly offers is a way of seeing: one where beauty, fantasy, humor, and emotion are allowed to occupy the same room.
Experience, sensation and connection are at the heart of each piece wherein Wanders believes that a designer’s work doesn’t completely end when a product is finished, profoundly it begins when one truly experiences it. “I always make sure I’m there,” he says. “At the opening, at the moment people walk in. I want to look them in the eyes. I’ve seen people cry. They feel more in that moment than they’ve felt for a long time.”
For Marcel, what interests him more are the reactions and response that actually happens, whether a smile, pause or questioning, reactions are sometimes unexpected, uncontrollable and spontaneous, which is different for everyone but will always be present.
“That’s my reward,” he says. “That’s where I get paid. There’s no one that feels nothing.”
Many of these icons, with new proposals, find their way to the anniversary presentation such as the life-like “Horse Lamp,” the lyrical “Heracleum” “Perch” “Meshmatic” and “Raimond” lights, luxurious “Monster” chairs and many others that hold space within the halls of the cavernous Superstudio Piu, their beloved address during the Salone del Mobile for many years.
Looking back to 25 years, Marcel and the company not only looks at achievement and sedentary nostalgia, but one of momentum, imagination and curiosity, dripped in silver. Since its inception, Wanders has always believed that Moooi exists in the tension and contradictions: a platform for the new and exciting yet full of uncertainty.
For Wanders, Moooi had been a “platform for the unproven,” an evolving universe of concepts, prototypes, designs and ideas that many would not touch on. “We have made the first works of many designers, and we’re still doing that” he says touching on the trust of new voices and emerging perspectives.
“It’s the new year of design” Marcel enthuses, emphasizing the significance and swirling energy around Milan, the magnetic epicenter of design world. “We all come together. We show what we’ve done. We make new promises” he continues.
At the recent Milan Design Week, Moooi presented a large-scale immersive installation at Superstudio Più, wrapped in silver – all raw, rough and reflective – unexpectedly revealing a world where icons were reengineered, light became movement and imagination was propelled fearlessly forward.
To celebrate Moooi’s twenty-five-year milestone, Dutch artist Mart Veldhuis, known for a rhythmic and illustrative narrative style, was invited to create a monumental landscape tapestry celebrating the brand’s visual universe: an ongoing living story woven with bold detail, references, moments and symbolism, with an eye to the next and coming.
For the anniversary, a special edition called “Moooi Weer,” meaning “beautiful again” in Dutch, returns as a celebration of renewal, with fresh perspective on the company’s recognizable and sometimes widely copied icons. Developed with trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort, the limited collection introduces Tin Age, a matte metallic hue inspired by tin, described as “romantic brutalism” harks to its industrial origins yet reimagined for today.
Never static and continuously evolving the new metallic paint is applied transforming existing objects from vintage pieces to reimagined stories, made beautiful again in Tin Age silvr- Horse Lamp and Pig Table by Front, Marcel Wanders’ Container Table, Monster Chair and BFF Sofa, among others speaking with a new expression.
Alongside the limited edition specials, four bespoke mega chandeliers, bringing together the company’s iconic lighting canons is an awe-inspiring sculptural and layered composition with boldness scale and imagination.
“We made the first works of so many designers. And we’re still doing that.” Wanders says with a sense of trust and unbounded curiosity with the jump off point of the “promising”: whether they are new voices, emerging perspectives, the youth and the space in between belief and uncertainty. “Youth is always right,” he says. “But we have to believe them. And if we believe them, we have to take responsibility for that. And help make it happen.”
Moooi is exclusively distributed by Abitare Internazionale in the Philippines.
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