GRAPHĒ: Mexican Design Is Ready for Its Close Up

The first U.S. edition of the Mexico Design Fair showed the country has much, much more to offer than Frida Kahlo souvenirs.

This story is part of Fair Take, our reporting on global design events that looks up close at the newest ideas in fixtures, furnishings, and more.

The time is right for Mexican design to have its moment. Over the past few years, there’s been more global interest in the country in general. Its architects, like Tatiana Bilbao, are becoming global stars. Tourism is up, and (maybe too many) foreigners are flocking to the capital. Luis Barragán has been reborn as a star for the Instagram age. But Mexico’s contemporary furniture and object designers don’t yet have the global clout that some of their peers elsewhere have. The talk at the 2025 Mexico Design Fair (MDF), which I went to last week in Austin, Texas, was that the country’s creations are ready for the spotlight.

The 2025 Mexico Design Fair exhibition at the Carpenter Hotel in Austin, Texas.

Preston Rolls

MDF is a relatively small event as far as such events go. It doesn’t have the endless exhibition halls of Milan’s Salone del Mobile; all of the two dozen or so objects were shown in a small, semi-outdoor space at the Carpenter Hotel. That intimacy has been intentional, MDF’s founder, Carlos Torre Hütt, tells me. Every previous iteration since the annual fair started in 2021 has happened around Puerto Escondido, Mexico, offering a beachy atmosphere where designers can share their work with design lovers over meals and talks spread over a few days of events.

Sadly for me, Austin does not have a seaside vibe, but this year’s fair was similarly casual, open to anyone to stop by and see, as designer Ana Lucía Santoyo of Mot Studio put it, that there’s more to Mexico’s contemporary design than just souvenirs with Frida Kahlo’s face on them.

Ana Lucía Santoyo of Mot Studio with a pitcher from her line of tableware.

Preston Rolls

The work on display was diverse: Santoyo showed a line of colorful ceramic tableware designed to work for all of the culinary traditions listed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list; Esteban Leñero displayed a cast-iron room divider depicting an abstracted villagescape; Bilbao presented a three-legged chair made of eucalyptus wood. There was a recurring theme of celebrating the country’s artisans and ancient traditions while putting their skills to new purposes. Jaime Levín took the twisted iron rods common to Mexican homes and made stools out of them, and Santoyo talked about working with Oaxacan weavers using historic techniques to create a new line of coasters.