Why Nina Yashar is in the Design 100

Nina Yashar has run Nilufar from Milan for nearly half a century, an unusually long tenure in a market that reinvents itself every design week. What began in the late 1970s as a business in antique and nineteenth-century carpets shifted, under her eye, into one of the defining galleries of collectible design — pairing rediscovered vintage pieces, including work by Gio Ponti that she helped return to prominence, with contemporary makers she chose to back early.

That distinction matters: Yashar is not a designer but a curator and dealer, and the Design 100 recognises that side of the industry deliberately. Her eye has shaped which vintage names re-entered the market and which new studios found an audience, first through the gallery itself and later through Nilufar Depot, the Milan warehouse she turned into an exhibition space in its own right. Few figures have done more to set the taste of collectible design from behind the desk rather than the drawing board.